“Everybody heard about it” - Steve-O challenges Chael Sonnen's theory on Francis Ngannou’s boxing debut, offers own prediction
Steve-O disagrees with the Chael Sonnen assessment of Francis Ngannou's recent business successes in combat sports.
The Chael Sonnen - Ariel Helwani beef was at least in part fueled by whether or not Francis Ngannou vs Tyson Fury did good pay-per-view business and good business overall. Steve-O indicated he was in agreeance with Helwani that the myopic reporting of the sub-seventy K buy rate did not paint a broader picture of what the show actually did in buys across all relevant platforms.
When speaking to Ariel Helwani on The MMA Hour and listening the hypothetical that the show did poorly on pay-per-view to paint a broader picture of the true residual impact of Ngannou-Fury, Steve-O said:
"Let's assume nobody watched Tyson Fury and Ngannou, that doesn't change the fact that even though nobody saw it, everybody heard about it. Everybody heard that Ngannou shocked the world. Everybody felt that they missed out because they didn't see it."
"Everybody now is just clamoring, ready, standing by to mark their calendars to purchase Ngannou's next fight. Which is why I disagree so much with Chael's assessment of the situation. Chael made the argument that Francis fumbled the bag after all, because, according to Chael if Francis had not taken the time off."
"If Francis had stayed active in the UFC, maybe stringing four fights together would have earned him the bag that he got for the one boxing match. Which ok (laughs), fighting four times to break even on one boxing match is an argument. But I submit that now Francis controls the bag. Now Francis is in the driver's seat."
Check out the clip of Steve-O on The MMA Hour below:
Steve-O and what he wants next for Ngannou
The Jack Ass star also said to Ariel Helwani that he was not too crazy about the rumblings of Deontay Wilder potentially either fighting Francis Ngannou in MMA or maybe even fighting 'The Predator' in a mixed-rules bout.
It seems that he, like many out there in the combat sports world, would see a lot more intrigue as well as parity in a Ngannou vs Wilder boxing match instead. The stunt personality sees Francis the boxer as the story as opposed to more Ngannou MMA bouts at least in the immediate future.
Playing off of the pugilistic parlance of Francis Ngannou "fumbling the bag", Steve-O made a joke that it was PFL having to fumble the bag and let Francis pursue more Queensberry rules outsides as opposed to throwdowns under the unified MMA rules.