He was supposed to splinter it, he ended up splintering himself. On March 7, Cédric Doumbé, rising MMA star in France and king of pre-fight verbal jousts, lost to Baysangur “Baki” Chamsoudinov. At the start of the third and final resumption of the fight, he was in fact stopped by the referee for knockout. technique after complaining several times of pain in the foot caused by a splinter. A decision that he contests today. In the heart of the Accor Arena Paris, in front of twenty thousand stunned spectators, the former kickboxing world champion lost his invincibility and, above all, part of his credibility.
Facing “Baki”, Doumbé obviously wore mitts, true symbols of MMA. If fighters first faced each other with bare hands, in the early 1990s, they quickly became established for their practicality and versatility. In this discipline mixing with a certain brutality different combat sports (MMA stands for “mixed martial arts”), the mitts are thick enough to practice boxing without risk of injury but also thin enough not to hinder the gripping phases on the ground. . Only downside: hands gloved like this, it's not easy to remove a splinter.
On Doumbé's mittens, as well as on the t-shirt of the cameraman in front of him, we notice the PFL logo. The Professional Fighters League, one of the many organizations trying to cash in on the current boom in MMA, legal in France only since 2020, offers posters that are as attractive as possible. But, in this world of bullies, the PFL has its little particularity: unlike all other organizations, it strictly prohibits all nudging... Let us thank the PFL for this delicate attention.
In this poignant image, taken a few seconds after the fight while the famous splinter is being extracted, Cédric Doumbé is hanging on the fence of the cage. If the first fights took place in classic boxing rings, the cage was introduced in the early 2000s to offer fighters a safer fighting environment. Effective ? Its supporters argue that the cage, octagonal in shape, eliminates angles, a major cause of injuries in the ring. Its detractors respond that its fence transforms the fighters into animals and pushes them to even more aggression...
Finally, since this is a question of sport and improbable injury, how can we not tell once again, in view of the accreditation around the neck of this member of the Doumbé clan, the crazy misadventure of footballer Steve Marlet at the Euro 2004 ? A few hours before the start of the competition, the player from the French team inadvertently caught his accreditation in the eye. Victim of a torn cornea, he was unable to compete in the competition, the only major tournament for which he was summoned with the Blues... KO. technical, there too.
