There are a couple of fighters in the UFC that I am extremely critical of because their fight style just doesn't appeal to me or I think they are unfairly targeted by the management of the organization and "fast tracked" to the top because Dana White or someone else realizes that their nationality is a great opportunity to engage an emerging market.
In the case of Ciryl Gane both of these things were true. France only relatively recently has made MMA not illegal - a move that honestly, too entirely too long to get approved by the government - but UFC has been focusing, at least somewhat on French fighters in the hope of capturing this once disallowed and affluent customer-base.
I have never enjoyed Gane and found him boring. Despite his imposing size and muscle definition, I was always turned off by the way in which he dances around his opponents rather than engaging them and while I do realize that this is an effective tactic to victory, it isn't an exciting one.
Well last night in France it is almost as though Gane realizes that the fans need to see more from him if he is going to remain top-billed and I can say for the first time ever, that I really enjoyed a fight featuring the big Frenchman.
From the time that this fight was even announced I was a negative Nancy about it. Having seen Gane paraded to the top of the heavyweight division was frustrating to me because he was "fast tracked" to the top in a way that other fighters get to do. He quickly made his way to the championship and lost... but the guy that beat him ended up walking away to go make millions in silly fake boxing matches. Unfortunately for Gane, there is someone out there that UFC favors even more than a ripped French guy to bring in the French audience and that is Jon Jones, who without ever fighting in heavyweight was offered a chance for the belt vs Gane back in March. It was ended by submission in the first round by Jones, who I guess deserves the belt.
Heavyweight divisions are a mixed bag generally speaking. The guys are so big that most of the time they don't even appear to be in good shape. Most of them gas out (run out of energy) very quickly, and almost all of them have the capability of ending a fight with just one punch since their arms weigh as much as most people's legs do.
Gane lost convincingly to Jones and this might have been a bit of a wake up call to him. The fans already don't really care for him because he fights boring, but the French still are going to cheer for the hometown guy. It is no surprise that he was going to headline an event in France.
This fight was kind of rigged from the start as expected by the choice of opponent. Since the event is taking place in France it is pretty clear that they want the French people competing to win and while Serghei Spivak is in the top ten, I would be willing to bet that if you looked at his fight history you won't recognize any of those names other than Derrick Lewis.
Gane was of course going to win this but I didn't expect him to do it in the way that he did. Normally, Ciryl is what I call a "counterstriker" in that he almost always waits for his opponent to come to him rather than putting together any sort of forward momentum. This results in wins for him so you can't argue with the strategy I guess, it is just very boring.
Perhaps Dana White had a chat with him and said something along the lines of "look man, we want you to do well here but you gotta make it more exciting, no more decision victories by getting a few more punches in than your opponent, the crowd needs to be entertained."
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Spivak looked out of energy about halfway through round 1
Well, I was entertained and I am prone to DISLIKE Gane. He started out as expected keeping distance and sussing out his opponent and determining range. Then from about halfway through round 1 until the end of the fight he was the aggressor almost exclusively. It was probably helpful that Spivak seemed gassed even before the end of round 1 but honestly, I have a little bit of respect for Gane now because that was entertaining.
The good news about Fight Night events is that they are not as protected as UFC Pay-Per-Views are so you can see all of the fight highlights without someone doing a crappy edit to get past the copystrike stuff on YT. Having said that, I would bet that this video is regionally blocked so if it doesn't work, my apologies. It works where I am.
This was a very one-sided fight and the final tallies for significant strikes was overwhelmingly in Gane's favor with 109 to 11.
I do feel a little bit bad for Spivak though because he was clearly being used by the UFC in order to pump up Gane again. I'm sure he was ok with it though because he did get a better-than-he-would-normally-get payday and a little bit of exposure. The downside is that people are going to know his name for the wrong reasons.
Either way, I hope that this new, more aggressive Ciryl Gane is here to stay because now I am actually going to look forward to the next time that his name is on a card. To be honest, I wasn't even going to watch this fight night and wouldn't have if it wasn't for Rose Namajunas being on the same card. Her story was a pretty good one as well but she came up short despite kind of redeeming herself after her embarrassing title fight loss last year.
Did you watch it? Did you like it? Do you think Gane is looking better than ever before? Let's talk about it in the comments!