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Fighters From France
Mixed martial arts remains a fledgling sport in the nation of France, with the most successful French MMA combatants hailing from a striking background. Five fighters of French descent have reached cagefighting's premier organization, the UFC: Cheick Kongo, Cyrille Diabate, Samy Schiavo, David Baron and Xavier "Professor X" Foupa-Pokam. But not all met with success. Schiavo, Baron and Foupa-Pokam sport a collective record of 0-5 in the Octagon, with 4 of the 5 losses coming by way of stoppage inside the distance.
Diabate (born La Celle-Saint-Cloud, France) and Kongo (born Paris, France), by contrast, each won their respective rookie UFC outings by first round KO, and continue to build names for themselves with American fans. Of the two, Kongo is the more developed name, a veteran of a dozen UFC bouts and a host of UFC Pay Per View knockout wins. Kongo continues to build the wrestling base essential for high level UFC success, a base which younger western European fighters often lack, and is the most widely known French MMA fighter in the world.
Striking wiz Cyrille "The Snake" Diabate has far fewer fights under the Zuffa banner than Kongo, but is in fact the more internationally experienced of the two men, and has been fighting in MMA professionally for over a decade. Few remember his lone outing in Pride in 2006, which he lost to pound-for-pound great "Shogun" Rua in the first round, but the bout is worth a replay; Diabate gave Rua all he could handle on the feet before finally succumbing to stomps halfway past the five minute mark. Diabate showed promise, and four years later, knocked out highly respected Brazilian Luis Cane in a long-overdue UFC debut.
