In the biggest fight of his career to date, Ciryl Gane suffered his biggest setback when he was submitted by Jon Jones at UFC 285. “Bon Gamin” has come back from adversity in the past but he recently revealed how this one defeat affected him.
Gane’s only other loss came to Francis Ngannou in a closely contested fight before he rebounded with a win over Tai Tuivasa. With the task of welcoming Jones back the Octagon for his highly anticipated heavyweight debut, the pressure was on.
After lots of talk about how “Bones” would look at heavyweight and deal with the elusive footwork and speed of the Frenchman, the fight lasted just over two minutes.
A simple mistake from Gane was all it took for Jones to lock up a guillotine choke and stand tall at the top of the heavyweight division. In a recent video posted on the UFC’s YouTube channel, the former interim champion spoke about the aftermath of that fight.
He said that suffering a significant loss in that way really set him back but it allowed him to come back even stronger with a rejuvenated motivation to improve. Fighters and coaches often say that you learn much more from a loss than you do a win and this proved to be the case for the 34-year old.
Gane says the difficult defeat has pushed him to work harder and place more emphasis on the finer details.
“After the fight with Jon Jones, I felt that people turn really crazy… [The loss] has helped me to grow a little bit more. At first, because in my sport, to loss like that, this is too much pain. And with the people, the media and everything, it was really hard. But I stay strong. I kept my positivity every time. I work hard but I was flawless, like, win after win, win after win and something like that [the loss], ‘Okay, I must train harder than that. I must do more.’ Now, I’m focused on the little things [that are] really important to grow up.”
