Ciryl
Gane didn’t give Jon Jones much
of a test in his heavyweight debut, and for that, the Frenchman is
upset with himself.
Advertisement
After a brief period on the feet, “Bon Gamin” was taken down and
submitted with a guillotine choke 2:04 into Round 1 of the UFC 285
headliner at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. While Gane’s
wrestling was expected to be his weakest area, few anticipated the
fight ending that quickly. That included Gane, whose emotions in
the aftermath included both disappointment and anger.
“Disappointed, of course. But the biggest feeling is angry about
myself. Really angry,” Gane said at the UFC 285 post-fight press
conference. “Because yes, we accepted this fight, it was not
short-notice, but the time was not too long, but we worked a lot,
we spent a lot of time. We trained with my sparring partners, so
I’m really angry about myself because I spent a lot of time with my
partners, my coaches, my family, and it [didn’t show] during the
fight. So I’m really angry.”
Saturday marked the second time that Gane came up short in a bid to
claim the undisputed heavyweight crown. After capturing interim
heavyweight gold with a TKO of Derrick
Lewis at UFC 265, he dropped a five-round verdict to Francis
Ngannou in a championship unification bout at UFC 270. The MMA
Factory product says that Saturday’s loss to Jones was far more
disappointing.
“This is a real loss,” Gane said. “This is the first real loss I
have. When I think about the loss against Francis, it was not a big
loss for me. I learned, but it was not too big. But this one is so
painful. This one is a real loss. Now this is the past. I must go
forward to see the future. I’m going to go straight back to the
gym.”
Gane is relatively young in MMA after making his professional debut
in 2018. He quickly rose to prominence in the UFC during a
six-fight winning streak that featured triumphs over the likes of
Junior dos
Santos, Jairzinho
Rozenstruik, Alexander
Volkov and Lewis. However, his wrestling has been badly exposed
in the setbacks to Jones and Ngannou.
“The first thing is I’m going to go back straight to the gym and
I’m going to work on my ground game,” Gane added. “Yes, he’s a
really high-level wrestler in the ground game, but we worked a lot,
but I don’t have good reflexes. So I’m really angry at myself, so
yeah, I’m going to work on it.”