Souad Soulimani has been a member of L’Observatoire du Sport Business since 2016. Founder of MediaSpoliS specializing in media education and the production of content dedicated to women’s leadership, she is also president of Radio Déclic, which gives voice to the inhabitants of working-class neighborhoods. on major societal issues.
For a long time, French fighters had to move abroad to practice their discipline and touch the dream of fighting in the UFC, the world’s most prestigious mixed martial arts organization. In a few days, the situation will have changed for this 2nd edition with the ESPN Fight Night 140 event which will oppose in the Main Event, the French Ciryl Gane to the Moldovan Sergei Spivac. The Accor Arena will be “the place to be” on September 2 for the 15,000 spectators lucky enough to attend and the millions of viewers who are about to follow a young sport that combines performance and entertainment.
To hope to meet the French fighters of Mixed Martial Arts and see them at work, French journalists, and there were few of us at the time, also had to go abroad to try to understand, promote and support French athletes. ready to challenge the world and fight everywhere with a major handicap: not being able to express themselves at home where the discipline has long been decried. From London to Birmingham, Las Vegas, Dublin, Cologne or even Montreal, it is with passion and determination that from Krystof Midoux to Cheick Kongo via Jess Liaudin, Cyrille Diabaté or even the Schiavo brothers, David Baron, Xavier Foupa Pokam, they trained hard and relentlessly. A generation that will have been the main actor in what will be played out in 2020: authorizing and recognizing the discipline as a sport in its own right and its practitioners as high-level athletes.
Since February 2020, what seemed like a difficult dream to achieve and after generations of sacrificed champions, is now a reality. With a community of fans estimated at nearly 150,000 million worldwide and audience records broken for each UFC event, the discipline does not stop progressing and conquering the world with an impulse initiated and controlled by the Ultimate Fighting Championship. In France, it is under the aegis of the French Boxing Federation that the discipline is structured.
While the Rugby World Cup arrives in France this September, while Paris will host the Olympic and Paralympic Games in the summer of 2024, it is The Ultimate Fighting Championship which is posing as the boss in the capital this fall. studious, sporty and historic. The UFC is indeed returning to the Accor Arena hotel with Ciryl Gane, the favorite good kid of Frenchies, headlining and Manon Fiorot in co-Main Event who will challenge Rose Namajunas. In total, 8 French people including 8 women will be on the Fight Card. It’s a crazy bet followed for a decade by the UFC certainly but also by all the fighters who have made it possible to promote their sport and convince the cautious to continue to move forward, perform and exist.
Between institutional brakes, political issues and business hopes, the sport that the public loves with millions of loyal spectators, generates historic figures in pay-per-view. MMA has finally managed to find its place in the French sporting, media and artistic landscape thanks to the experience and expertise of the UFC. Because it is the performance that is followed but also the spectacle: what the athletes offer and what the UFC offers to its fans. A real American “customer experience” that we sometimes tend to underestimate and which means that France was one of the last countries in the world to authorize the organization of these events on its soil while the public is present and in demand. Moreover, the UFC box office bears witness to this with pre-sales and an almost “sold out” guaranteed in just a few minutes.
If the most popular of French fighters, the good kid will find his audience after the shock against Jones, another Frenchman is to follow: Benoît Saint-Denis trained by Daniel Woirin the coach of the stars of the UFC, from Lyoto Machida to Anderson Silva, great preparations have no secrets for him.
After the “sacrificed” athletes, the “confirmed” fighters, it is the turn of the women to take power to be considered in their turn as champions in their own right. An opening of the organization and the recent competition with the former judoka who has become world star Ronda Rousey who, as ambassador from 2012 to 2015, writes history, gives birth to vocations and appears as the highest paid female athlete according to the magazine Forbes with for the year 2016 a fortune estimated that year at 14 million dollars.
These figures are important, they mark the ability of the organization to create a sports offer that positions the athlete at the heart of the media system with a real image and a marketing project that is sustainable. A sports career is short, you have to create, enhance and negotiate your image to be “marketable” and “bankable”. To achieve this, win his fights and give everything in the octagon.
And there is no doubt about the capacity on September 2 of the Nice Manon Fiorot (10 fights for 9 victories) on display to take up one of her biggest challenges. First of all sporty by facing the one who will have been UFC champion in the -52 kilos, Rose Namajunas and media because with her, like the fighters Nora Cornolle and Zarah Fairn also on the bill, it is about to impose itself in the octagon and in the eyes of the world in a sport where women have their place with the desire to give birth to vocations and allow the clubs to welcome little girls in greater numbers. For Manon, it will also be emotional to enter the legendary Arena room with a thought for her dad who left too soon, he who gave her the desire, the determination and the rage to win.
You will have understood it, this September 2, they will enter the octagon to write the History of French MMA but also their own. So that their name can exist and their sport endure without forgetting where they come from and those who, before them, paved the way for this new Ultimate Fight Night to be a guaranteed and shared success.
