“I could never dream a better debut than that. At my home,” Charriere told UFC.com on media day at UFC APEX. “It was like six or seven years since I didn’t fight there. When I was fighting there, there was no MMA. MMA was not legal, so most of my career has been done outside of France. All the crowd and all the people know me because of social media and what I’ve done outside the country, but they have never really seen me fight. It was the first time for most of them to discover me live.”
“I think they think, ‘Who’s this crazy guy who has red hair, comes in with big tattoos, with all the crowd cheering,’ and they’re like, ‘Who is it?!’ And then I have a maximum fight and throw hard body kicks and I look like I own the moment. It was the first time you’ve seen me you were like, ‘Whoa, this kid is a superstar, where did he come from? He’s been in UFC for a long time. Oh no, it’s his first fight.’ That’s what I think people thought if that’s the first time they saw me.”
Saturday’s Full Fight Card Preview
Charriere believes with such a great showing that night in Paris, he set an expectation for how fight fans and UFC brass expect him to perform. That’s not Charriere putting any extra pressure on himself to meet the hype; he wants to set the bar high and continue to push the limits of what he can do.
It was a tough road for Charriere to make it to the UFC, one that took him 28 professional fights before he was signed to the roster. The highs and lows have made him grateful to be on the biggest stage fighting the best opponents in the world.