The linguistic barrier can be steep, but Manon Fiorot is fluent in universal language each time she walks in the cage to fight. Originally from Nice, on the French Riviera, she was dispatched to face Erin Blanchfield, 25, in Atlantic City last June, in a fight – let's be just honest – she was set up to lose.
The devil was in detail. Blanchfield was a younger decade, unbeaten and New Jersey. No one wanted to fight it, especially on the shore of Jersey. She was supposed to hit her own ticket for a fly weight title, going through Fiorot, who had been quietly dominating herself, having released Pink Namajunas during her previous fight in Paris.
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We saw what happened. From time to time, we concentrate so hard on the buzz saw that we do not see when he heads for a freight train.
“It was one of my best fights, because we were both undefeated in the division together, and it is a very good fighter,” Fiorot told aprowed by an interpreter. “So yes, this is certainly one of my best fights because I won.”
Manon Fiorot enters the UFC 315 Saturday event in Montreal with a chance to become the first French fighter to win an undisputed UFC title. (Photo by Jeff Bottari / Zuffa LLC via Getty Images)
(Jeff Bottari via Getty Images)
Winning she did.
While Fiorot is about to face Valentina Shevchenko for the female fly weight title at the UFC 315 on Saturday evening, the context is important to explain why it is the favorite of betting. Fiorot has very slyly succeeded one of the best performances of 2024 by giving Blanchfield his first defeat. And she didn't just beat her. She made Blanchfield ineffective. Sometimes helpless. If nothing else, certainly a work in progress.
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It was as if Blanchfield had undergone an existential crisis in combat so as not to have a plan B, because Fiorot was non -budgetable, flawless and just as rooted to his power as the redwoods of Ribeauville.
To put it frankly, she was a brute. She kept the fight standing and punished each Blanchfield movement.
Thus, while Belal Muhammad, the star on Saturday evening, should receive all the credit in the world to have entered England and have beaten Leon Edwards from Birmingham at an unhabless hour, Fiorot should also have something similar a night when only the purest of the Duhard of Pure Duhard even pay attention.
“I think it's too much time that I do not finish the fights at the UFC,” said Fiorot, repressing for having left the fight to reach the dashboards. “But I think that Saturday evening is a good thing – it's a good chance to finish the fight.”
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Shevchenko, for the record, was finished exactly twice in his long and a long career. Once by Liz Carmouche back when they crossed the trails in Concho, in New Mexico, about 15 years ago, then again in her first fight with Alexa Grasso. This loss, of course, has set up the three -part series which has held the division of the weights of female flies in a pending state in the past two years.
Meanwhile, the Fiorot, 35, has stacked bodies. Blanchfield was the seventh of a rope since Fiorot made his debut in 2021 against Victoria Leonardo. She marked unilateral unanimous decisions on Jennifer Maia and Katlyn Chookagian before welcoming Namajunas to the division before her compatriots in the fall of 2023.
Of his five decisions, including three – including the five round against Blanchfield – were clean scales on the Judges dashboard. Only Namajunas and Chookagian can claim to have won a single turn against her.
“To be honest, I am a little surprised to be preferred for this fight, because Valentina is the champion and she was so dominant,” said Fiorot. “But if you pay attention to the last three fights, I think I'm more dominant than it.”
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Fiorot is the reigning queen of the euphemism.
Because she is French, she has not received a ton of fanfare in the United States. She does not speak English, but if you looked at her in the Ariel Helwani show last year, you know that she understands more than she leaves. Among her extracurricular paras, she is a snowboarder, and she says that the ground of the hinterland and the half epipes beat her body worse than all these 125 pound women that the UFC puts before her. His kickboxing karate trajectory in MMA has become all the more provocative because the MMA was illegal in France until 2020.
Five years after the taboo lifted, it is as a fighter that she best translates. If she beat Shevchenko in the co -printing event in the French -French epicenter, Montreal – where “French accent is very funny”, according to Fiorot – she will become the first champion born in incontestable French in the history of the UFC.
Ciryl Gane won the acting title of heavy goods vehicles against Derrick Lewis in 2021, but who had the asterisk of the Place holder. Francis Ngannou represented France when he won the line of linear heavyweight earlier the same year, but he was born in Cameroon. Fiorot was born and raised in France, and she could make this little story by dethroning the biggest weight of female fly that the UFC experienced, at a time when France has become a new MMA home.
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“I do not know if I am a superstar (in France), but yes, many people recognize me and speak to me,” said Fiorot. “It gives me a little power in the streets.”
Winning is the universal language. Another W and any anonymity that she has worn as a competitor will be lost by the golden accessory that she draws from Canada.
