Athletes
Charles Jourdain | Just Getting Started
French-Canadian Opens Up About Shift In Approach, Looks Ahead To 2026
Prior to his appearance in Vancouver in October, it was clear that something had shifted in Charles Jourdain, who had carved out a lane for himself as someone who enjoyed pushing the envelope on social media. Not only had he dialed back the amount of content that he was putting out on various platforms, but he was generally more serious, more intense.
There were still moments where he was playful and enjoyed engaging with the media; however, there was a different look in his eyes than during his featherweight days, when he often seemed happy to compete and put on a show. Towards the end of 2025, the French-Canadian bantamweight took to X and spoke about the shift:
“Started (2024) with two losses. The doubt hit hard: ‘Maybe I’m not good enough.’ Then boom —Clarence told me: ‘We’re having a baby.’
Watch Every UFC Event For One Low Price On Paramount+
That news changed everything. I realized I wasn’t the man or the fighter I needed to be. I dropped the bad habits immediately. Went straight to the UFC PI, made real changes, adjusted my approach, and finally started treating my UFC career like it mattered. Now, after 16 UFC fights… it feels like the game (has) just begun.”
“I was in a bad spot,” began Jourdain when we spoke a day or two after he posted the statement, happy to have an honest, open conversation about where he was and how things have changed in the wake he and his wife welcoming their son Hector to the world. “I was coping.
“I started reading a lot and realized —it was actually by watching Mads Mikkelsen, who did Hannibal, and one time he said, ‘Therapy only works for the people who have the desire to know themselves properly,’ and there is an element of truth behind that. I was like, ‘I’m just lying to myself that gaming, porn, and all that stuff is okay; it’s nothing, it’s not that bad,’ or that I could eat pizza and just train harder.
“My desire for hedonistic stuff was higher than my desire to be a great man, but then, when you have a kid on the way, there is no alternative: you need to be a great man because this kid will have you as a role model for a long time. It was the first time I realized there was something that mattered more than myself.”
So, as he said in his X post, Jourdain made changes.
2026 FIGHTERS ON THE RISE: Part 1 | Part 2
He ventured to the UFC Performance Institute and came away ready to make the switch to bantamweight. He traded his previous hobbies for reading and working to become a better version of himself. He dedicated himself to his craft fully, switching from doing very little film study and advanced prep on his opponents to meticulously watching film and dissecting how each fight would play out.
Towards the end of 2024, he debuted as a bantamweight and submitted Victor Henry, becoming the first person to finish the well-traveled Josh Barnett protégé and only the seventh person to beat him in 32 professional bouts. An eye injury kept him from competing in the summer of ’25, but when he touched down in Vancouver, Jourdain was clearly on a mission to show his win over Henry was just the start of things.
Charles Jourdain Octagon Interview | UFC Vancouver
Unlock MORE of your inner combat sports fan with UFC Fight Pass! Fighting is what we live for. And no one brings you MORE live fights, new shows, and events across multiple combat sports from around the world. With a never-ending supply of fighting in every discipline, there`s always something new to watch. Leave it to the world`s authority in MMA to bring you the Ultimate 24/7 platform for MORE combat sports, UFC Fight Pass!
Charles Jourdain Octagon Interview | UFC Vancouver
/
In just a touch over three minutes time, the now 30-year-old Quebecor wrapped up a second straight submission win, finishing Grant in the precise manner he had detailed when sharing his vision of how the bout would play out when we spoke prior to the contest.
“I could see he was very right-hand dominant, and he likes hooks a lot, so we worked on linear tactics,” recounted Jourdain, who rocked Grant with a head kick and a flying knee before wrapping up his signature high-elbow guillotine choke and securing the tap. “I threw a couple of flying knees because I wanted to tell him, ‘Hey, if you come close, you’re gonna eat a knee.’ He kept advancing, and I was like, ‘You’re not getting the memo, you’re not getting the message.’
2025 UFC.COM AWARDS: The Newcomers | The Submissions | The Knockouts | The Fighters | The Fights
“I didn’t throw much volume, but everything was so precise. Everything was so whack, whack, whack according to what we wanted to work, and he kept coming towards me. I snapped him with a head kick, and I saw his eyes wobble. He went on autopilot and went to throw the…”
Jourdain turned and referenced the picture from the fight with Grant hanging behind him in his home studio, which shows him in flight, putting his knee on Grant’s chin as the former Ultimate Fighter finalist threw a left hook ahead of a right that never got out of the holster.
“He’s coming with circular punches, and we went linear with the knee,” said Jourdain, smiling. “It’s not magic —it’s a tremendous amount of work dissecting every single pattern you can — and it worked properly. That’s why now I feel like a professional. That’s why I stated on X that I feel like now I’m treating this career with seriousness.”
If this is how Jourdain performs in his first year of pursuing things with seriousness and a drive to be the best professional version of himself possible — two fights, two wins, two nasty guillotine finishes —then you should understand why he was one was one of the four ascending bantamweights to be highlighted in our two-part Fighters on the Rise 2026 series that dropped earlier this week.
While the 135-pound weight class is loaded with talent, Jourdain stands as an intriguing mix of experience, technical acumen, and creativity, while also having only recently turned 30 years old, which means he’s very much in the midst of his athletic prime. Just as the shift towards a growth mindset has done wonders for him over his last two fights, Jourdain continues to point to his time competing at featherweight and facing some of the sluggers he stood in with as being a critical part of what has him brimming with confidence heading into 2026.
READ: UFC BJJ 2025 Year In Review
“I’ve found pleasure in growth, and the growth I’ve found since my switch to bantamweight, since having my boy is tremendous,” he said with a smile. “I’m not hateful towards the man I was back then because I didn’t know any better. I’m still a funny dummy, but I’m less intense on subjects I shouldn’t put attention on. I was too much online trying to be this warrior for the male archetype that I wasn’t understanding the world properly.
“My frustration was towards the fact that I was not the man I wanted to be, and I spewed that frustration on the world.
“I’m not frustrated about the path that I had because I was built in a different fire than those other bantamweights, like I told you last interview,” he added, shifting his focus to his exploits in the Octagon. “They never faced Jean Silva, Shane Burgos, DooHo Choi — those hard hitters — so it’s a different type of puzzle. They’re faster at bantamweight, but in terms of raw power, I faced so much more intense battles — even at ’55 a couple times —so I’m feeling quite confident in my (positioning and trajectory).”
Charles Jourdain Gets Submission Win In Bantamweight Debut | UFC Edmonton
Unlock MORE of your inner combat sports fan with UFC Fight Pass! Fighting is what we live for. And no one brings you MORE live fights, new shows, and events across multiple combat sports from around the world. With a never-ending supply of fighting in every discipline, there`s always something new to watch. Leave it to the world`s authority in MMA to bring you the Ultimate 24/7 platform for MORE combat sports, UFC Fight Pass!
Charles Jourdain Gets Submission Win In Bantamweight Debut | UFC Edmonton
/
As we spoke, the surging Canadian disclosed that he’s been chatting with UFC matchmaker Sean Shelby about his next matchup and that he’s confident that all the pieces will come together soon, allowing him to get into the Octagon in the first quarter of 2026 and continue his push towards the Top 15.
But Jourdain isn’t content with waiting for things to happen, either; he’s more of a “speak things into existence” type, or at the very least, someone who isn’t afraid to tell you how his ideal year maps out when you ask him about it over an early morning Zoom call.
“I saw that UFC 326 is very beautifully stacked and I would love to be a part of that card,” he began, wish-casting where his 2026 debut will take place. “It’s violently stacked with the main event for the BMF belt. This is a very violent card, and I would like to be on the BMF card, so let’s see what the UFC does.
READ: The 10 Fights We Are Looking Forward To This Month
“My vision — which could be derailed by so many things, and I’m not looking ahead, and I don’t want to sound pretentious, but I’m trying to visualize a path, so my goal would be to beat the man they put in front of me and then aim up.
“I doubt Deiveson Figueiredo will beat Umar (Nurmagomedov), which is soon, so Figueiredo, ‘The God of War’ —when you have a title like that, I cannot have someone above me with that title; there is no way. I’m ‘Air,’ but I’m gonna be called ‘Ares’ for this fight; another version of the god of war.
“I’d love to fight Deiveson Figueiredo, and from there on, it depends on what is going on with Merab (Dvalishvili) and Petr (Yan), because they’ve beaten everybody right now. There are so many great things with the ‘35ers. We’ll see if they give Merab a rematch. There are a lot of guys that haven’t fought Yan; there is (Sean) O’Malley, who has beaten Yan; there is so much traffic right now, including Aiemann (Zahabi) as well.
“My guess is everybody is going to try to duck (Cory) Sandhagen and Merab,” continued Jourdain. “Everybody is gonna try to duck them because in their mind, they can beat Yan more than they can beat Sandhagen and Merab. I think those two guys are gonna be not very aimed at, so that being said, after beating ‘The God of War’ in my vision, I would like to get my hands on Sandhagen.”
A Q1 win, a showdown with the former flyweight champion in the summer, and a maybe round out the year with a five-round main event against the ever-dangerous Sandhagen to close things out? That sounds like a pretty entertaining slate and the kind of matchups that could not only elevate Jourdain in the divisional rankings but deliver excitement for the UFC audience as well.
“Why I like these matchups is because they’re the type of guys that not many people want to fight, and that would be interesting,” he added of the twin hypothetical matchups he suggested.
As Jourdain said, there are so many great things happening right now in the 135-pound weight class, and if things go as he’d like in 2026, his contribution to that will only increase in the year ahead.
Tags