How Francis Ngannou Shocked the Boxing World
Mixed martial arts was designed to sniff out frauds. The U.F.C., the sport’s dominant company, was launched in 1993, with a championship that matched a wide range of fighters, to determine which styles were effective in real life, or at least a caged simulation of it. (The U.F.C. rule set was notably inhospitable, for instance, to a sumo wrestler.) Decades later, M.M.A. fans were still sharing videos of characters like Xu Xiaodong, a Chinese fighter known for challenging—and thrashing—various gurus who claimed special powers. He accused his opponents of practicing “fake kung fu”; by beating them, he sought to prove that their arcane claims and methods were more or less bullshit.Is boxing bullshit? The sport itself seems fairly empirical: two people punch each other for about half an hour,...