Ciryl Gane had more on his plate at UFC Paris than he expected.
The former UFC interim heavyweight champion headlined the Sept. 2 event in his homeland with a highlight-reel return to form, demolishing Serghei Spivac with a second-round TKO, much to the delight of his countrymen at the Accor Arena in Paris. Unfortunately, however, the high from Gane’s win was short lived. Later that same day, Gane discovered that his home in Nogent-sur-Marne had been ransacked by thieves during the event.
“It’s not only my country, I suppose you have this everywhere the world, but yeah, in my country, unfortunately, when you are a little bit famous now — you see MMA in France, everybody talks about that, and everybody can see how much I can win. So yeah, he did a great job because he waited [until my] fight, the last fight,” Gane said Monday on The MMA Hour. “He waited the night and he went out [to my] home and he did some bulls***.”
Initial reports out of France valued the missing items at more than $160,000, which included a Rolex watch and other assorted jewelry. According to those reports, police discovered a forced entry through the front door of Gane’s residence. A suspect for the crime has yet to be found, but Gane said Monday that police continue to work the case.
When asked how much was stolen from him, Gane simply sighed.
“Too much, my man,” Gane said. “I was not focused [on how much]. Too much.”
While the situation was unfortunate, Gane also knows it could’ve gotten much worse. Neither his wife nor his daughters were at home during the break-in, which saved the scene from potentially turning dangerous, and because of some creative deflection from his wife, Gane didn’t learn about everything until after his fight with Spivac had already been decided.
“My wife saw that at first, because he did it around 8 p.m. [right before the fight], and so she went to the babysitter, she dropped the girls [off] and she came back, and when she came back she found all of the [chaos] at the home,” Gane said. “But she keep that [to herself], and after, when we went to bed after the fight, she told me unfortunately. But she did really good because I saw nothing, I saw nothing about [it before the fight].”
“This is can be really traumatizing for the girls if they [saw it happening],” he added. “You get hurt sometimes, [there are] some stories about that. It’s not fun. It’s really not fun. So, yes, my wife has some traumatizing [aftereffects from the break-in], but she’s OK, and we’re going to fix that.”
Gane said the biggest lesson he’s taken from the incident is to place an increased priority upon protecting his family. He said he’s taken steps to ensure something like this doesn’t happen again. But he also acknowledged that mission is becoming more difficult as his profile in France continues to rise as a well-known UFC heavyweight contender.
“It’s good, that’s great, the people are really kind, but now you see with all of this, I’m done with it, I’m finished with it,” Gane said of fame. “At the beginning, it’s really cool. At the really beginning, it’s so cool. But now I’m done with this, man. If I can cross [the street anonymously], that’s better, that’s way better now. … Now it’s different, now I just want to be in a quiet place, calm, can chill with my family. But now it’s difficult. Unfortunately it’s difficult to go to the school with my daughters, because you have all of this s*** that can happen after, like the people [that robbed my house] during my fight at home.”