French professional mixed martial artist Ciryl Gane has been blowing up on social media thanks to his fights with Francis Ngannou. Both of them speak fluent French as one was raised in France while the other is a Cameroonian native! Just in case you wanted more clarity, it is Ciryl Gane who came into this world in La Roche-sur-Yon, France and suffered his first loss in MMA at the hands of Francis Ngannou. With other interesting things about his career, let’s take a deeper look at the French mixed martial artist Ciryl Gane’s career over the years!
A Look Back At Ciryl Gane’s Career, And What’s To Come Next!
Who is Ciryl Gane?
Thanks to his good looks, explosive talent, physique of a Greek god (196 cm height, 115 kilos), and the smile of a movie star, Ciryl Gane has it all.
Competing in the Ultimate Fighting Championship heavyweight division, Frenchman Ciryl Gane is a professional fighter since 2018, he has also previously competed for TKO Major League MMA, where he was the heavyweight champion.
In terms of his profession, Cyril can be called a mixed-style fighter, representative of the heavyweight category.
On January 23, 2022, at UFC 270, Gane fought to unify the heavyweight titles against Francis Ngannou which was the most exciting match of his career, sadly ending with the first defeat of Cyril Gan by unanimous decision.
Ciryl Gane’s Career
2022:
First defeat was in MMA 2022:
Ciryl Gane went head to head with Francis Ngannou for the UFC Heavyweight Championship on January 22, 2022, at UFC 270 where the Frenchman was ahead after the first two rounds. Eventually, Ngannou controlled him after he switched to wrestling for the majority of rounds between three through five. After Ciryl Gane lost the fight via unanimous decision, it was recognized as his first defeat in any martial arts competition.
The Frenchman had started well in the first two rounds. Very mobile, on tiptoe, he tried to turn around Ngannou and regularly changed guard. Gane followed his game plan to the T:
- He managed to touch without being touched,
- He was able to keep his distance,
- He was good at varying the striking zones in striking.
After the 4th round, the Frenchman had no more gas when we expected a drop in speed on the side of Ngannou, in the last two rounds. Gane attempted a takedown in the last round but Ngannou, well coached by Kamaru Usman, the welterweight champion and outstanding wrestler, reversed the situation and resisted a heel lock from the Frenchman, Gane’s last and only chance to reverse the outcome of the fight – which is why he lost.
Curtis Blaydes wanted to make a comeback against Ciryl Gane:
In early 2022, Francis Ngannou the UFC heavyweight champion defended his title against interim champion Ciryl Gane in the main event of UFC 270 – back in February.
The Predator has therefore unified the titles and is now the only man with a belt at 265 pounds. However, a knee injury and difficult negotiations with the UFC forced the Cameroonian champion to stay away from competition.
While awaiting the return of Francis Ngannou, who may not arrive before the end of 2022, the division must keep moving. For this, Curtis Blaydes, one of the contenders for the title who is looking for an opponent against whom a victory could bring him closer to the belt, hopes to meet Ciryl Gane. “It’s the next logical fight for both of us,” Blaydes captioned on his Instagram, hoping he can annihilate Bon Gamin’s striking.
2021:
The phenomenon of French MMA, Ciryl Gane fought his fifth UFC fight in Las Vegas against Jairzinho Rozenstruik, number 4 in the heavyweight ranking. A new step in a staircase that must for many lead him to the title of the heavyweights. Less than three years after his debut in the competition in MMA, the thirty-year-old was quickly advancing in his career like a hurricane bringing France to headlines.
2020:
Gane was scheduled to face Shamil Abdurahimov on April 18, 2020 at UFC 249. However, on March 5, 2020, it was announced that Gan was forced to pull out of the tournament due to pneumothorax during one of his workouts. The fight was eventually rescheduled for July 11, 2020 at UFC 251. The fight was subsequently canceled a second time in mid-June as Abdurahimov was pulled from the bout for undisclosed reasons.
In turn, Gane was scheduled to face Sergei Pavlovich on August 8, 2020 at UFC Fight Night: Hermansson vs. Vaidman. However, Pavlovich had to pull out due to injury, so the original fight against Shamil Abdurahimov was scheduled again for September 26, 2020 at UFC 253. However, the fight was again rescheduled for UFC Fight Night: Ortega vs. Korean Zombie October 18, 2020. The bout again fell through as Abdurahimov pulled out for undisclosed reasons on 28 September 2020 and was replaced by debutant Ante Delia. On October 14, 2020, it was announced that the fight was canceled due to Delia’s issues with his previous PFL contract.
Cyril Gan faced Junior dos Santos on December 12, 2020 at UFC 256 where he was victorious via TKO in the second round. During the next bout, Cyril Gan faced Jairzinho Rozenstruik in the main event of the evening at UFC Fight Night: Rozenstruik vs. Gan. He was then victorious via unanimous decision.
After defeating Alexander Volkov, Cyril Gan faced Derrick Lewis in the main event of the evening at UFC 265, with the interim UFC heavyweight title at stake. He won by TKO in the third round on August 7, 2021, becoming the interim UFC heavyweight champion by defeating American Derrick Lewis at his hometown of Houston in the United States. Gane thus becomes the first French native in history to win a belt from the prestigious American organization!
2019:
Cyril Gane made his debut on August 10, 2019 at UFC Fight Night: Shevchenko vs. Carmouche 2 vs Rafael Pessoa. Gane won the fight via triangle choke late in the first round.
Cyril faced Don Tal Meyes on October 26, 2019 at UFC Fight Night: Maia vs. Askren won with a heel twist in the third round, earning him the Performance of the Night award. After dominating his opponent in the first two rounds, Gane landed a heel hook during the third round.
On December 21, 2019, Tanner Bozer was Cyril’s next opponent at UFC Fight Night: Edgar vs. Korean Zombie. The Good Kid aka Cyril won the fight via unanimous decision (30-26, 30-26, 30-26).
2018:
Known for participating in Ultimate Fighting Championship tournaments of the fighting organization UFC, Cyril has been performing at a professional level since 2018.
2016:
Gane’s Muay Thai career debuted professionally on June 4, 2016, in an AFMT Muay Thai Heavyweight title fight against Jérémy Jeanne. He won the fight by knockout in the second round. Following his decision win against Samih Bachar, he was scheduled to fight K-1 veteran Brice Guidon at La Nuit Des Titans. He defeated Guidon by knockout in the third round.
Next, Game was due to defend his AFMT title against Jonathan Gengoul at Muay Thai Spirit where in a winning effort he won by knockout in the first round. At Warriors Night, he defeated Bangaly Keita via third-round knockout. He was then scheduled to fight multiple WBC Muaythai Champion Yassine Boughanem in a duel. He won the match via decision.
Career beginnings:
Trained by Fernand Lopez, Cyril Gane first signed with Canadian MMA promotion TKO where his first fight was for the vacant TKO Heavyweight Championship against Bobby Sullivan. He won the title in the first round via choke.
Cyril Gane then made a title defense against Adam Dejchka 30 days later, winning the fight in the second round via technical knockout. His third TKO fight and second title defense was against Rogers Souza, whom he defeated in the first round via TKO.
Most interestingly, as a kid, one of Ciryl Gane’s classmates directed him to a muay-thai gym. For three years, Ciryl Gane brought home two titles of champion of France. He will also win his fight against the world number 1 heavyweight, the Belgian Yassine Boughanem.
Where is Ciryl Gane now in 2022?
21 June 2022:
As of June 2022, just a month before this article was written, the French fighter bragged on his Twitter account with the caption: I’ve got @teddyriner on my side. Alluding to more fights with an amazing team, we wish the MMA artist the best of luck!
29 June 2022:
Later in the same month he posted an ad for his live fight with the caption: “Rendez-vous ce soir en live sur Twitch” (See you tonight live on Twitch). He fought live on
@TwitchFR with the @LazyKingMMA.
Sept 2022:
Scheduled to face Tai Tuivasa on September 3, 2022 catch Ciryl Gane at UFC Fight Night 209.
10 Interesting Facts About Cyril Gane
1. Guadeloupe origin:
Cyril Gan was born on April 12, 1990 in the west of France in the city of La Roche-sur-Yon.
Through his father, Romain Gane (a bus driver and footballer in the Honor Division who notably went through the club France Aizenay Football), Cyril Gane is of Guadeloupe origin.
2. School and mad potential:
During his youth, Ciryl Gane played two different sports: football and basketball.
According to an interview on his Facebook page, there is a story of a young footballer “very promising” but “not fierce enough” and who “did not yet know what he wanted, not mature enough to start a great adventure”.
“I am a fast learner, as we say in English. Someone who learns very quickly. Some kind of gifted sportsman, perhaps. I have always had skills in sport, always been at the top of the class in this discipline. When there were competitions in the area, whether it was UNSS or inter-school stuff like that, it was always me, I was everyone’s pet peeve. But I had never pushed the machine to the end, at least at the mental level, and I did not have this perspective of telling myself that I could make it my job.
In school, Ciryl Gane went on to obtain a BTS in sales at the Édouard Branly vocational school in La Roche-sur-Yon.
3. First job was selling chairs:
Subsequently, Ciryl Gane moved to Paris to continue his work-study training in a furniture store.
A discussion with his coach in Puteaux, Mr. Xavier Séverin, tired of not seeing him enough in training (he lived on the other side of Paris) asks him not to waste his potential, to hit the mark and push him to invest.
The boy then dreams of GLORY, the main organization across the planet, and can devote himself fully to his objective after having been made redundant from his position as a sales advisor in high-end furniture (which he sometimes had to leave in the middle of the day to go to the weighing of his fights). A new encounter with a coach named Fernand Lopez will again change his destiny
In less than three years, he became double champion of France and notably beat two big names in the discipline, Brice Guidon and especially Yassine Boughanem.
4. Opted for live Twitch games on 28 Jan 2022:
Earlier this year, Ciryl inaugurated his Twitch channel by hosting his first live broadcast and accumulated nearly 21,000 viewers during his debut, accompanied by guests such as Manuel Ferrara and Bruce Grannec.
5. Wife and kids:
Many don’t know but actually, Ciryl Gane is married with two daughters. Since his beginnings in muay-thai, Ciryl has been fighting to “take care of his family”.
His companion who “doesn’t like to watch her husband fight too much” because she “doesn’t like violence” and his little girl born in 2018 along with her sister needed Cyril for their future.
Growing at the UFC, the family’s future is ironically in how brutal Cyril can get. Fortunately, he says that it’s “in (his) DNA to be super brutal”, that he “likes contact a lot” and that he “wants to hurt in the cage” but that he doesn’t have “no enemies” and gives “the opponent a big hug” after the fight. The classic fighter!
6. First defeat in MMA went viral (10 wins, 1 loss):
“Sorry”, stated the mixed martial artist Ciryl Gane facing the camera after the fight. Exhausted, his face scarred for the first time, the Frenchman already knows the judges’ decision. Gane is no longer unbeaten, crushed by the struggle of Francis Ngannou during the last three rounds. “Congratulations to Francis, he had a great fight. I’m a little sad, but it’s a good experience. I’m still young in this sport,” Gane said in the Octagon to the audience at the Honda Center in Anaheim, a southern suburb of Los Angeles, California.
Effective in the first ten minutes, Gane was overthrown by the power of the Cameroonian Ngannou who opted for another strategy, notably taking advantage twice of an error by Gane on high kick attempts to bring the Frenchman to the ground and impose his fight from the 3rd round. The clinch phases against the cage were also favorable to Ngannou.
In the fourth round, Gane tried to regain the distance with front kicks but was ripped off for new big domination in the fight of the Cameroonian. Tired, in search of a new breath, the French listened to the martial instructions of his coach, Fernand Lopez, before the 5th and last round: “We are going to war now! We can’t lose this fight on a cardio problem!”
As the fight continued with a wrestling strategy by Francis Ngannou, the Cameroonian defied all predictions and made his fight speak to win unanimously by the three judges after 25 minutes of fighting (48- 47, 48-47 and 49-46). In this last round, the two fighters were more often lying on the ground than standing.
Like a beast with two backs, one fighter found himself on top of the other several times in turn, until the exhaustion of each and the last seconds. In the end, the power of the “Predator” made the final cut against the technique of “Bon Gamin”.
“He knew how to use his strength. I got caught a few times and that’s what made him win,” contended the Frenchman, disappointed.
“It’s a great relief this evening, the last ten months have not been easy,” reacted Ngannou when interviewed by RMC Sport. “The most important thing was to keep a cool head. Using wrestling was a possibility, even if it wasn’t specifically planned”.
For Ciryl Gane, who expressed a “big frustration”, Ngannou’s tactics were expected. “We knew it was a possibility for him to win the fight this way. Kudos to him, he did a great job with his wrestling and used his power very well”. Ciryl Gane remains the number 1 challenger despite everything, pending the decisions of the UFC on the Jon Jones case and the desires of Stipe Miocic.
7. Nicknames:
- “Good Kid”
- “Bon Gamin”
“Bon Gamin” was on the posters of the ultimate Cameroonian Francis Ngannou vs the French Ciryl Gane fight. But who is called “Bon Gamin”?
Fighting for the supreme throne of the UFC heavyweights was the Cameroonian heavyweight champion who is nicknamed “Predator”, while the second Frenchman is known by the nickname “Bon Gamin”. During that time, the good kid had never known defeat in his MMA record.
8. His relationship with coach Fernand Lopez began in a misunderstanding:
After following his friend (the son of a Cameroonian restaurateur with whom Fernand Lopez helps open the doors of the MMA Factory in search of sparring-partners for Muay-thai and other disciplines), Cyril meets Fernand.
“I speak with Ciryl and I find him very nice,” remembers Lopez. He is humble but at the same time he says to me: ‘Next week, I face Brice Guidon’. I say, ‘Either he’s suicidal or he’s a myth because I don’t know him from Eve or Adam.’ I wish him luck but I don’t take it seriously. A week later, he sends me a screenshot of a newspaper from Tours that says he KO’d Guidon on a jump knee or something. I google his name and come across some fights and I say: ‘Wow!’ It’s a bit messy, brawler, but when you look with expertise, you see there’s a peek and things that can be good for the transfer to MMA.”
Next, Lopez offers him an offer, a truly daunting challenge: to stop kickboxing/ muay thai and get into MMA, where there’s a lot more to be gained for the one Fernand says he sees “in the UFC in less than two years and champion in less than three”.
Gane who didn’t know anything about MMA, ends up accepting a new world not to displease him: “MMA is less restrained than muay-thai and I think it really suited me: being able to do a little what I want, get out of the codes a little and bring your style”.
9. From potential stardom to actual rise of fame:
His “ability to learn quickly”, claimed and “one of the reasons why (he) loves sport”, accelerates the process according to Lopez who started to work a lot on Cyril’s movements, which will earn him the nickname of ‘dancer of Vincennes’ because he moves a lot for a heavyweight.
“I don’t focus on the ground from the start because when we take on athletes who come from other disciplines, we stuff their heads right away with big, super complicated techniques on the ground”…. “We had taught him not to move in muay-thai: you block, you hit, you advance, ” Lopez specified.
“But we felt that he had steps, lateral movements, which he did in a natural way as a heavyweight which is unbelievable. He’s a natural athlete. I couldn’t see, other than an accident or something like that, what could prevent him from being a UFC champion.”
Lopez then got Gane into the UFC after putting together a plan of action: TKO, a Canadian organization which has the advantage of being broadcast on the UFC Fight Pass platform, guaranteeing exposure in the eyes of UFC decision-makers.
Helped by a Canadian journalist, Lopez convinced the TKO boss to let his protege fight for none other than the heavyweight belt for his first career fight. In August 2018, going against Bobby Sullivan, who replaced an injured Adam Dyczka, the Frenchman managed to bring him to the ground and submit him to a loss.
Not bad for the debut of a kick-and-knee specialist who has just started!
10. Legacy:
Fernand Lopez, his trainer, sees in him a bit of Jon Jones (former king of light-heavyweights who will go to the heavyweights) and especially of Israel Adesanya (champion of the middleweights who will also try to take the heavyweight belt- lightweights at the beginning of March during UFC 259) for the style and the player side, evoking “the complete package”. “He has energy and charisma,” continues the boss of the MMA Factory. Who went so far as to drop the big words a few months ago: “I believe that Ciryl will be, over the next decade, the face of combat sports in the world”.
