I thought the fight was not sanctioned in France because he was fighting another guy with very little experience in MMA, but also without experience in another fighting sport and it was seen as a mismatch given his extensive experience with Kickboxing
Nah, it was exactly the other way around.
The French commission prevented Doumbé from making his UFC debut in France because he was too inexperienced compared to his opponent (according to the French commission atleast).
MMA only became legal in France last year, but they still have some special rules for the sport.
According to their rules, someone <10 pro MMA bouts can’t fight someone with more than 4 MMA bouts than he got himself. When someone has 10 or more fights he can fight whoever he wants to fight. I will explain to you how it works below:
The originally scheduled Cédric Doumbé - Darian Weeks fight is off because Doumbé is an Elite 2 fighter in France (<10 fights, someone with 10 fights or more is an Elite 1 fighter), which means he can only fight against someone with no more than 6 MMA fights, since Doumbé has a MMA-record of 2-0.
Weeks got 7 fights, so the fight is not allowed to take place.
Weeks ‘only’ has 7 pro bouts (his amateur MMA-career not included). Doumbé got 2 MMA fights, but is a very experienced kickboxer.
Imo there should be no issues sanctioning this fight, unfortunately I’m not the French sanctioning body…
I agree that it’s a good rule to prevent guys from padding their records, but there should be exceptions for guys like Doumbé, Pereira, etc. who are very experienced/accomplished in other combat sports.
For example:
5-1 Alex Pereira KO’d 25-3 Sean Strickland inside 3 minutes despite a huge gap in ‘MMA’ experience.
I really don’t know why the UFC didn’t reschedule that fight outside of France or gave Doumbé another opponent. He’s quite a big draw and they potentially could build him up to a contender.
Hopefully the UFC gives Doumbé a fight after his win on December 17 at MMA GrandPrix.
I’m hoping for a fight at UFC London, maybe against someone like Blood Diamond?