The Severe Spotlight: Kai-Kara France

Championship perseverance. Max Holloway once spoke about how many fighters have an ambition get to the UFC; and just how hard of a task it is to get there. Once there and established, the difficulty to rise through the lower half of the division and make a ranking, then to maintain a ranking. To then climb through the rankings is harder than most would believe, let alone to find yourself in a single digit, or sub 5 ranking is beyond 99.9% of the world’s comprehension.

He goes on to speak about challenging for and winning the title, and whilst Australia’s Kai Kara-France has yet to win the title he fought for one in 2022, losing to Brandon Moreno in a Fight of the Night award worthy performance. His next fight, almost a year later see’s a razor close split decision loss to rising star Amir Albazi.

A cancelled fight at the end of 2023 with Manel Kape due to a concussion suffered in training was the third test to the perseverance of Kai Kara-France. Perseverance does not only come in the fashion of determination and will to chase the title, or to chase anything specifically. Perseverance is to keep the flame of the dream once held alight enough to see the value in trudging through a tough loss in his first title fight, a tough fight that marginally goes the other way, the training camps for both of those. Perseverance is making the hard call to pull from a massive fight due to a concussion, something rare in MMA. Perseverance is dealing with all the online fervour and opinion that devolves from your decision and keep the flame alight.

Perseverance is to take the necessary time away from hard training to heal such an injury; and then to pick yourself up and find the extra fire necessary to train for the moment when a contract lands on your kitchen table that reads a name who just took the champion for five, very tough rounds. The fight is in your home country, in the co-main event on a card that showcases the best of your gym, and the best of your region.

To then stop him inside the first round.

That first round begins with a confident glove tap and an immediate high guard, long lead hand and a dip in stance. Lots of lateral movement opening spots for jabs high and low. The games being played in the first 50 seconds are that of Kara-France looking to draw angles on Erceg, and with Erceg looking to counter that footwork with cage cutting. Kara-France beginning to lose the lateral battle switches momentarily to a couple of footwork shifts and planting his feet to fake a combination before switching his lateral path. He finds an opening to a clean 1-2 forces Erceg to reset.

The second minute see’s Kara-France look to setup the right hand over the top. He does this smartly by going to the body twice with a jab, and then faking to the body with a jab and landing the right hand to the solar plexus. This gets Erceg at least thinking that the pattern and rhythm of the shots will be body work. Yet on the fourth entrance, Kara-France goes high with the right hand, that whilst partially blocked, takes Erceg by surprise.

Back to the lateral movement, the feint game, the dipping of the stance and the solid defensive posture for Kara-France, but also a return to the body work, two long straights touch the right side of Erceg who has opted to look for kicks as a deterrent.

Erceg has a nice moment as he forces Kara-France behind the tramlines and gives him some trouble with feints and a right hand of his own, but a beautiful step through left hook resets the pair to the centre. It is beautiful to see Kara-Frances’s ability to get ahead of the defensive movements and turn them into offensive movements for himself.

The body work, a staple of the arsenal in this fight returns before a swift return to the dome – a clean left hook right hand lands. From that land, the pace begins to ramp up, Kara-France offers some lovely switch hitting as he rotates his hips through a number of oscillations of stance to land a couple of combinations on the very defensively sound Erceg, who to his credit is taking these shots at the very end of their range and retreating and circling well.

As we creep into the third minute of the bout Erceg has seen enough of the body work to land a crisp left shovel uppercut as Kara-France lowers his own level, and so the adjustment from Kara-France is to lead with a lead jab to the head, following with a right to the body and left hook up top.

This is the innate beauty, and power of switch-hitting ladies and gentlemen. Kara-France begins his attack with his right foot almost squarely planted against the side of the cage. A jab sets up the step through right hand, the right hand has him in the centre of the cage already, as the bowling ball left hook comes flying from the back pocket alongside the core rotation of the left leg stepping through and dumps Erceg flat to the canvas, almost rigid just past the centre point.

Kara-France gets to work on passing the legs by and squeezes in a couple of shots before the wrestle up from Erceg begins. Kara-France posts on the back of the head and limp legs out, continuing to keep the post on the back of the head, forcing poor posture from Erceg. The right hand lands a couple of shots. We must give Erceg much credit and admiration for his ability to pop back up and to continue fighting, but Kara-France smells blood, and pushes him around the cage with his fists. He tees up a clean straight right that drops Erceg again, standing over his man, the left hand the measuring stick, the right hand the punishment referee Rich Mitchell only needs to see a couple land before graciously stepping in.

Huge win for Kai Kara-France, a huge win for perseverance.