If you poll most professional fighters today, a majority would say they began training as a child. Some wrestled all through school. Others learned the art of jiu-jitsu as a kid and worked their way up to a black belt status.
But Ciryl Gane, the future of mixed martial arts, spent most of his adolescence playing basketball and soccer. It wasn’t until he was 24, when he was working for a furniture store in Paris, that he even considered fighting.
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“I started this sport because I had a friend in my school who asked me to try it,” Gane told The Athletic. “I said, ‘Why not?’”
Flash forward to today, and Gane is arguably the most unique fighter in the sport. No heavyweight moves the way he does, with incredible speed, athleticism and footwork for a man his size. He has dominated and defeated all 10 of his opponents and is the odds-on favorite against Francis Ngannou on Saturday at UFC 270 despite facing an opponent whom many consider the most lethal puncher in MMA history.
Gane is fighting for the belt just seven years after first putting on gloves. It’s an almost improbable story — and one that nearly ended before it began.
Even though Gane joined the local Muay Thai gym with zero experience, he blew his coach away in their first session together. The potential was there, but his heart wasn’t fully in it at the time. Gane acknowledges that his coach, Xavier Severin, was close to throwing him out for his effort level early on.
“He gave me no choice. He said, ‘Come for real or never come back to my gym,’” Gane recalls. “He saw in myself the potential to do something good.”
Within months, Severin placed Gane in a Muay Thai competition, and it quickly became trial by fire. He somehow always made it out unscathed, eventually winning all 13 professional bouts (nine knockouts) and claiming the heavyweight national title.
Gane says he was perfectly content continuing in Muay Thai but dreaded the daily commute from the east side of Paris to the west. He needed a gym closer to his home. That’s when he met Fernand Lopez at MMA Factory, the biggest MMA gym in France.
Ciryl Gane presents the UFC championship belt to Fernand Lopez after defeating Derrick Lewis in the interim heavyweight title bout in August 2021. (Josh Hedges / Zuffa LLC)Lopez, unlike Gane’s previous coach, wasn’t enamored of what he saw at first.
“He was kind of skinny,” Lopez joked. Despite knowing many of the top Muay Thai fighters in France at the time, Lopez had never even heard of Gane. His new pupil told him that day he was about to compete against French Muay Thai legend Brice Guidon.
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“I was like: ‘This guy is a liar or he’s naive. He’s going to get killed,’” Lopez said. “I didn’t know him, but I knew Brice Guidon. I thought (Gane) was a liar. The next week, he showed me a piece of paper that said he knocked out Brice Guidon. I said, ‘Wow.’ After that, I started to pay attention.”
The two soon had lunch together and laid out a plan to get to the UFC. Lopez told Gane to quit Muay Thai completely and focus on the other aspects of his game. If he did so, Lopez could get him to the MMA’s premier promotion within two years.
Gane had some struggles early on with footwork, Lopez said, but more importantly, he was learning how to strike while also going backward. Doing so would enable him to connect with his opponent without facing the potential of being taken down. Then the worst of it: developing Gane’s nonexistent ground game.
“You have two ways to teach a kid how to swim,” Lopez said. “You can bring him to the regular class so he can learn, or you can throw him into the water and see if he can survive. I threw him in there.”
Lopez had Gane grapple very early on with future UFC middleweight Nassourdine Imavov, who “was taking the mount position all day long.” Gane constantly got frustrated, yelling curse words at himself for not learning faster.
“When people tell me that he’s undefeated, I like to say: ‘Yes, in the octagon in the UFC. But in my gym, he has so many losses,’” Lopez jokes.
The two continued working together day in and day out for a year and a half, picking up wins in smaller promotions, before the UFC came calling in 2019.
Ngannou, like Gane, was shaped by Lopez in mixed martial arts. At 26, he moved from Cameroon to Paris and was homeless. In hopes of finding a new career, he showed up to MMA Factory with a background in boxing. He and Lopez quickly formed a close bond, and soon he was fighting professionally. After compiling a 5-1 record in smaller local promotions, Ngannou joined the UFC.
Francis Ngannou will defend his UFC heavyweight belt against Ciryl Gane at UFC 270 on Saturday. (Chris Unger / Zuffa LLC)Ngannou eventually left France for Las Vegas in 2018 but spent some time back at MMA Factory for training. While preparing for Curtis Blaydes, he met Gane for the first time.
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“The training was really great,” Gane said. “It was a good opportunity for me to compare myself because I had just started my career in MMA. So to know how the guy in the top five in the UFC fights, I was really looking to see. For me, it was just a big chance.”
He described his performance during that camp as “poor.” Ngannou showed the power that has made him famous today and even knocked him down at one point. The two trained together a few months later as Ngannou prepared for a bout with Cain Velasquez.
Ngannou won that fight — and the next three — to claim the title of “The Baddest Man on the Planet.” Gane, meanwhile, joined the promotion in 2019 and defeated all seven of his opponents to set up a heavily anticipated matchup with his former sparring partner.
Both fighters say there’s no beef between them.
“As I’ve been saying all week, there’s no bad blood between Ciryl and I,” Ngannou said at the UFC 270 news conference. “I have no personal problem with him. But we still have to fight on Saturday night and put on a show.”
This UFC heavyweight title bout is about as good as they get in MMA. Yes, the backstory is there of two fighters who originated from the same camp with the same trainer, but the real focus needs to be placed on what could happen inside the cage.
Ngannou is arguably the most devastating power puncher in the sport’s history. Since dropping a frankly bizarre split decision to Derrick Lewis in July 2018, he’s destroyed five foes with early finishes. His second-round knockout of heavyweight GOAT Stipe Miocic last March — redemption from an earlier loss — was about as devastating as they come.
Despite having also worked with Lopez, Gane is the exact opposite of Ngannou. He has incredible athleticism for a guy who stands at 6-foot-5 and 247 pounds. Though he has one-shot power, Gane prefers to pick opponents apart from range with sharp punches from all angles and leg kicks. He’ll wear on an opponent until he’s a shell of himself before landing that finishing blow.
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“He’s a good fighter and a good opponent on Saturday night,” Ngannou told The Athletic. “He has speed and footwork, which is not something seen very frequently in heavyweights. But he’s the challenger and I’m the champion.”
How this ends is really anyone’s guess.
“Gane can win that fight on points pretty easy,” longtime MMA trainer Ray Longo told The Athletic, “but he has to avoid getting decapitated.”
Gane says he isn’t worried about that world-class power.
“Some people are afraid of that, but not me,” he said. “You saw my last opponent, Derrick Lewis, was exactly that. He’s all about power. But if you look at the fight, I wasn’t scared.
“(Ngannou) is a challenge. When something looks a little bit harder than another fight, I get excited.”
(Top photo: Jeff Bottari / Zuffa LLC)
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