Yeah he was, but the French commission prevented Doumbé from making his UFC debut in France.
MMA only became legal in France this 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.