Paris, France’s MMA Factory founder Fernand Lopez spoke recently with John Morgan for MMA Junkie, and discussed Ciryl Gane‘s decisive but unexciting win over Jairzinho Rozenstruik in the main event of UFC Vegas 20 on Saturday.
I need to admit that the people didn’t enjoy the show, said Lopez. To have a show, to tango, you need two people to tango. This side of things, we didn’t have competitive opposition, so clearly this fight wasn’t that entertaining, to be honest with you. But I have a feeling that people are way, way too critical for this fight because there’s a few things that you can look to this fight and that you can be happy to have this young man in the division.
That was clearly the opportunity to show who he is, but there are two ways to show who you are. You can just go there and score a submission right away, 10 seconds and then win the fight. You can go in there and just knock the guy out, 10 seconds, and go with that, and people still don’t know what you are capable to do, right? In my way, there’s a lot of answers we had on Ciryl Gane this weekend.
We can now say that Ciryl Gane – I knew that he could fight. He can have the five rounds, because I knew how we prepared, but people didn’t know that. I know he can handle very dangerous knockout power men without rushing, without being in a rush to finish him. He did manage that.
When you put that in perspective – knowing that this guy just arrived in the MMA game, never fought in amateur, has only eight fights, most of the fighters in the UFC when they were on the level of eight fights were just playing local, regional events. And we have this kid in UFC, fighting the No. 3 in the weight division. Man, I think Ciryl Gane is bringing things that the heavyweights never seen before.
After the fourth round, Ciryl asked me, ‘How are we looking?’ I said, ‘We’re winning all the rounds, but I need you to finish this fight. I need you to move forward and finish this fight. And the gameplan finally to finish this fight was at some point, if we cannot knock Rozenstruik down, he would have gone for the takedown and then submit him. One of the things that pushed Ciryl Gane to release the pressure on the takedown was the elbow. We have seen people collapsing on the double leg with the side elbow in the head, and Rozenstruik did hit two times on the head at some point, and so the fight wasn’t that easy, and my point of view is that we need to back on the ball, train again with Ciryl Gane, and I will be helping him to try and finish people even when they are not committed, when they are not engaging in the fight – so we need to learn how to finish someone who is not giving you the opportunity to finish him.
I just want people to give him a little time. I’m not blaming anyone, including Dana White. Dana White, in my little bit of dimension as a promoter in Ares, I would have been like Dana White, saying that, ‘OK, for my odds and everything, we were looking that these big dudes would kill each other and have a KO, and you guys are going to a split decision? You’re killing my odds.’ So I literally understand Dana White. I don’t blame him. It is Dana White, and I’m such a big fan of this dude. This man has done so much, and so I understand the point of view. If you have numbers of the week before that, Derrick Lewis and [Curtis] Blaydes, the numbers was high in the audience, and the numbers went down. I totally understand that. But listen, eight fights. Man, can you count people that have eight fights that can play and do what he did to Rozenstruik, man? Who can stand in front of Rozenstruik and play with him?
Stylistically speaking, I don’t see someone outstriking Ciryl Gane. Mainly, we’re improving how to get people on the ground because he has sick jiu-jitsu right now. So yeah, we’re thinking how to improve him, and we’ll be there anyway. He still has time to improve.
What do you think UG, is it time to give Gane a little more time to grow?
