Anthony Joshua collides with heavyweight boxing’s newest attraction, former UFC champion Francis Ngannou, on March 8 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Ngannou burst into the boxing world late last year in a debut against the WBC heavyweight world champion Tyson Fury. The Cameroonian event sent the champion to the canvas in the third round en route to a razor-thin split decision loss.
Joshua’s performance against Ngannou will undoubtedly be compared to Fury’s life and death showing this past October.
"If I’m honest, I won’t look for [the knockout] at all," Joshua said Monday to DAZN during a kick-off presser for the 'Knockout Chaos' event.
"I like to hurt people, definitely I really do. But if you look at it, every opponent me and Fury have in common, I’ve knocked them out. Every opponent, I’ve stopped them. I just do what I need to do, I’ve never been in competition with him anyway in that sense."
Fury has his own fight in Riyadh next month — a world heavyweight unification fight against Oleksandr Usyk, a fighter Joshua has lost to twice.
Joshua, though, says he has scored wins in more emphatic fashion over opponents he shares with Fury. While Fury went life and death with Otto Wallin, for example, Joshua finished him in style. While Fury bamboozled Wladimir Klitschko over 12 rounds, Joshua prevailed in an up-and-down heavyweight classic. Though Fury knocked Dillian Whyte out faster than Joshua, AJ was the first person to finish the Londoner.
"Everyone we have fought that is similar I’ve ended up breaking their face or knocking them out, so we will see what happens," said Joshua.
Reverting his attention back to Ngannou, it's clear he has already started doing his homework.
"We have researched [Ngannou] deep, you get too much from it. There are little similarities that he has shown when he stands up in his MMA career. I tend to look at performances against people where they are standing up, rather than grappling. There is a lot of information you can get from opponents he has fought in MMA as well."
