Cédric Doumbé: The Ballad of Swagger & Urgency
Photo by Erwin Spek/Soccrates/Getty Images
After a scrappy split decision loss to Alim Nabiyev, the former (now current) Glory welterweight champion and international badass, Cédric Doumbé, learned the lesson that Jorge Masvidal should’ve learned years prior: Being a technician is great, but so is knocking people out. Sure enough, Doumbé mopped up his very next opponent, Thonchai Sitsongpeenong, in just over 30 seconds to net his first finish in Glory. Currently riding a five-fight winning streak, four of those victories have come by way of stoppage, and Doumbé (occasionally derided for being a safe point-fighter) looks more dangerous than ever.
An uptick in aggression has been the story of Cédric Doumbé recently, but as one of the most tactically adroit fighters in modern kickboxing, there is a lot more to the Cameroonian-Frenchman’s style than meets the eye. It says a lot about a fighter when they establish themselves as both a nail and a hammer, but Doumbé is the rare breed who can both solve a difficult stylistic puzzle in front of him and confidently blast through them if need be.
Tactical Depth & Mechanical Breadth
The first aspect worth discussing about Cédric Doumbé is his stance. Foregoing a standard Dutch stance with an erect posture, a light lead leg and squared hips, Doumbé fights out of a bladed stance with his trunk folded over his lead hip. This allows him to step into his jab with more pop, as well as to slip, roll, and duck under incoming punches. There are moments where you might mistake Doumbé for a career boxer.
When Doumbé squares his shoulders to his opponent, it both masks his jolting jab/rear hand changeup and his low kicks, as well. He is capable of taking subtle angles on the pocket both offensively and defensive, hop-stepping with his second jab to slip outside of Nabiyev’s jab before hop-stepping back to avoid the following rear hand.
In the early going, Cédric tends to work off his jab, both on the lead and the counter. As a proficient switch hitter, both lead hand jabs have equal utility, but the variety of jabs are also of note. Here, he forces Harut Grigorian to pay attention to his feints before stabbing his torso with the body jab, but this is just one example. In the past, I’ve seen the Frenchman utilize a step jab, power jab, counter jab, vertical fist jab, and trip hammer jab.
As with nearly every element of Doumbé’s technical game, there is more than one purpose behind each piece. His stance permits a more protean form of head movement, utilizing trunk rotation off of both hips, but it also allows him to step toward an opponent with more weight behind his jab. Doumbé is a dynamic combination puncher, but he is equally comfortable outmaneuvering opponents on the backfoot with pivots, shifts, and leans.
The Frenchman takes a slight angle as he shifts backward towards the ropes into southpaw, countering Kongolo’s low kick with a loaded jab. Cédric switches back to orthodox to land a jab-low kick. Expecting another jab, Kongolo brings his guard high as Cédric tosses out his lead hand, and he plants his weight on his lead leg, anticipating a following leg kick. After throwing a jab, however, Cédric uses his rear hand to check Kongolo’s guard, while feinting with his hip to cover his leftward leaning pivot before landing an open-side switch kick to the body. He’s able to program Kongolo into anticipating, and then completely confuses him, all in the span of a few seconds.
Cédric is among the most adept lateral movers in kickboxing. Particularly when he is pressured to the ropes, he not only exercises strong ringcraft by keeping his exits open and gliding between left and right, but he consistently attacks and covers his movement in these moments as well. His mobility and evenly-weighted stance assists his propensity to shift into angles on offense, and he frustrates opponents attempting to limit his mobility by retracting his lead leg when they low kick. At virtually every range, Doumbé is a consummate ring general and he will make sure his opponents are aware of this fact.
Nabiyev jabs at Doumbé, who transfers his weight slightly off his lead foot and onto his back foot. As he rolls the weight back onto his front foot, Cédric throws a shifting overhand right into southpaw, before shifting again with overhand left back into orthodox. The mastery in this exchange comes from Doumbé initiating the first shift without any sort of major commitment off a step-in, since all he does is even the weight back onto his front foot before shifting.
With the weight on his lead foot, Doumbé enters with a lead uppercut into overhand right. When he initiates again, Cédric paws at Holzken’s guard with his lead hand to draw the shell before repeating the combination, taking a subtle step towards Nieky’s centerline with his lead foot, and stepping through with his rear foot to close the combination with an inside leg kick.
The most remarkable element of Cédric’s game is his ability to attack in sequence at virtually every turn. Even when the Frenchman plays a deliberate counterpunching game, he isn’t waiting on an opponent to give him a specific opening. He is converting his own offense in layers. Whether Cédric is covering an entry with feints/setup strikes or layering in half-power shots with full-power shots and back again, the champion is a uniquely indecipherable opponent, because he is exceptional at accentuating exchanges with more than one key opening strike at a time.
With his back along the ropes, Doumbé demonstrates several different skills at once before punctuating this exchange with a very specific strike. He checks and parries Holzken’s lead hand with his rear hand, leans to the open side, and flashes his jab before tapping an inside leg kick. As he moves laterally, he immediately shifts, cuts back in the opposite direction, and hop steps at an outside angle to run Holzken onto a southpaw lead hook. Doumbé continues to overload Holzken with several threats and feints before Nieky determines that it is his turn to strike. As soon as he tries to close Cédric down, he gets nailed with an uppercut down the middle, splitting his high guard.
Holzken attempts to draw a counter from Cédric with a throwaway inside leg kick, He then pivots inward with his rear foot and framing with his lead hand on the inside of Doumbé’s shoulder, who attempts a cross counter. However, Doumbé switches to southpaw off the frame, taking an outside angle on Holzken, and following Nieky’s attempted exit with a body-head combination. As he follows through with the body shot, Cédric brings his trailing leg square, and takes a small hop-step with his lead leg to set up the right knee down the middle. When framing off Holzken’s gloves, Doumbé concludes the exchange with a final southpaw check hook.
‘Staying busy’ is often considered a backhanded compliment in combat sports, since it implies a fighter is merely doing noncommittal work in an attempt to hold a lead. Doumbé is an assiduous fighter, but his depth of entries and comfort in extended exchanges means that by keeping his workrate up, he is frequently able to completely befuddle his opponents with carefully disguised setups before stinging them. It is never just volume for its own sake; it is volume to overload his opponent’s senses and to actively create his own openings. For example, Nieky Holzken has had a tendency to wait for his opponent to conclude their attack before initiating his (also known as watching his work), which became a serious hindrance when he fought Doumbé on both occasions.
Standing southpaw, he feints his lead hand, then posts his hand on Holzken’s lead hand as he is shifting off the ropes. He lands a body kick with his trailing leg as Holzekn pivots before retracting into an orthodox stance.
Doumbé is also a capable rhythm fighter, which dovetails nicely with his application of volume. He throws a jab away onto Holzken’s gloves to draw up Nieky’s high guard before collapsing the distance into infighting range. Doumbé throws a three-punch combination (body-body-head) all separated by half-beats, before landing an inside leg kick on the exit. The tieup keeps Holzken’s hands inside, while the body shots draw Holzken’s guard downward.
What continues to amaze me about Doumbé is the sheer breadth of his skillset. If an aggressive ring-cutter is attempting to track him down, Cédric will keep his exits open along the fence, befuddle his opponent with feints, checks, and throwaways, and taunt them for missing a simple leg kick. If an opponent wants to play a patient game, Doumbé can up his workrate, draw responses, and open up his own counters. There may not be a more multifaceted striker in kickboxing than Cédric Doumbé.
The Frenchman tosses out a noncommittal 1-2 on the gloves of Holzken to draw the left hook out, with his weight folded over his lead hip. Nieky attempts a left hook counter, but Doumbé slips inside of the hook, leaning leftward, before slinging a counter right from his hip with all of his weight loaded into the punch.
Doumbé throws out a low kick in an attempt to draw a response from Vienot. Jimmy responds with a high kick off his rear left leg. The Frenchman blocks with his right glove, scoops his left arm under the kick, and parries it across the plane of Vienot’s body. As he is sweeping his opponent’s leg, he kicks Vienot’s planted leg out to floor him. Technically, this doesn’t count for anything under Glory’s ruleset (and on the contrary, it’s actually frowned up), but it looks cool nonetheless.
Cédric’s comfort as a counterpuncher might be his calling card, but this is a bit reductive. It is true that, when he counters, Doumbé is typically initiating with his hands. His kicks generally follow the punches, which is another conventional diversion from traditional Dutch stylings. Instead of using low kicks to counter his opponent’s step-ins or running them onto intercepting knees, Doumbé boxes and then kicks. If he is low kicking, the objective is usually to off-balance or punctuate, as opposed to aggressively chop.
Doumbé slips inside, then outside of Holzken’s 1-2 before weaving into a left hook, further punctuated by a trailing leg kick. Nieky continues to pressure Doumbé backward into the ropes, but Cédric cuts a slight angle off the backfoot by shifting into the southpaw and double-jabbing Holzken’s entry off a knee.
As entertaining as Doumbé is, he is also very thoughtful in his approach. The champ dictates exchanges on his own terms, while also hampering his opponent’s ability to build their own momentum. In his clinical first victory over Nieky Holzken, Doumbé looked like a problem-solver; an astute responder. After a pair of ornery decision losses to Grigorian and Nabiyev, Cédric made an effort to show the world that he could ask the threatening questions just as easily he could solve them.
He’s Violent Now
Cédric Doumbé clearly grew tired of allowing close decisions to run away from him, so he made a conscious effort to sit down on his punches more and hang in the line of fire a bit more before blasting opponents for obliging him. Underneath the layers of craft and nuance in Cédric Doumbé lies a powerhouse who has gotten really good at punching people into orbit. It has not been any less compelling to watch.
Doumbé parries the jab and throws a shifting overhand right into southpaw, wedging his lead foot towards Vienot’s centerline. Jimmy frames into a crossface off Doumbé with his lead hand before catching Cédric with a short right hand. Doumbé doesn’t appear to care, as he reangles his rear foot while his upper body folds over his rear hip, loading up the overhand left that crumples Vienot, shifting back into orthodox in the process.
Cédric is rarely the taller or longer fighter in his bouts, which means he has less ability to leverage his knees, and while I love his kicking game as an ancillary tool in his system for setups and counters, he is rarely a momentary finisher by way of a perfectly placed high kick. However, Doumbé is a massive puncher and the natural weight in his hands assisted the Frenchman’s transformation from ‘extraordinary technician’ to ‘disciplined chaingun.’ Instead of trying to feint an opponent stupid before catching them leaning with a head kick, Doumbé will continue to set up punch entries, built up attritional damage, and sustain pressure before cracking them.
Vienot shells as he steps into the pocket, wary of counters, but he makes the mistake of squaring his stance with his rear leg. Cédric hop-steps backward into a check hook, which Vienot attempts to lean off of, and a follow-up right hand. Jimmy attempts to re-angle off his left leg, but ends up pivoting directly into a left hook. Doumbé shifts off a right uppercut into southpaw before levering a jab into the crossface, before slinging a left hand to Vienot’s head to conclude the exchange.
In past bouts against Yohan Lidon and even Jimmy Vienot, Doumbé has encountered some issues swinging wild if he smelled blood. In this finishing sequence of Harut Grigorian, everything looked just about seamless. After throwing an overhand, Doumbé immediately ducks under the counter into a crossface. Cédric is far more diligent about changing rhythm, timing, and targets here, attacking Grigorian’s body and around his guard without overextending on anything and continually slipping the return fire.
Doumbé can be hittable when he chooses to force committed exchanges with opponents, but I like this exchange for the simple fact that Cédric changed the timing on his final right hand, causing Vienot to throw, thinking he was safe. Vienot hits a nice backstepping straight counter here, but he is completely unaware of the final counter right hand that puts him down.
Two of Cédric’s last four knockouts have come from punches in clinch transitions. Glory has been maligned for their reluctance towards extended clinch exchanges, but the champion sneaks in attacks on breaks and exits, particularly when his opponents attempt to walk him down and take advantage of his shorter stature. Given how methodical Doumbé’s distance management has shown itself to be, these victories underscore how tenacious the Frenchman can be when he is looking for the knockout.
As Doumbé punches into the clinch, Sitsongpeenong attempts to knee with control of the collar ties. Instead of conceding position, the Frenchman simply blasts his opponent over the top.
Instead of intercepting his opponent like Sitsongpeenong, Nabiyev initiates the clinch himself, walking Doumbé into a knee up the middle from the double collar tie. Cédric takes a wider step leftward with his lead leg, plants his weight on his back leg, and smashes Nabiyev with a right hand on the break.
In some of Doumbé’s early Glory appearances, he could be a bit of an emotional fighter. After losing his title and fighting his way back to the championship, a necessary maturation process ensued. Cédric is scarier than he ever has been, but now there is a synthesis between the technical wizard and the natural banger.
Conclusion
Former Glory welterweight champion, Murthel Groenhart remains a potentially confounding matchup for Doumbé. Despite all of the Frenchman’s poise and variance within exchanges, Groenhart combated this by limiting the time spent in exchanges at all. He did a commendable job of keeping Doumbé on the end of his jab and forcing the Frechman to chase. Hardly a thriller or even a particularly clean victory, but enough to drag an ugly fight out of one of the most esteemed technicians in the sport. A victory of Groenhart will avenge Doumbé’s only remaining loss in Glory, and subsequently eliminate the only remaining threat for Cédric at the moment.
Rumors of Doumbé transitioning from kickboxing to MMA have surfaced recently, and although I’ll happily watch Cédric beat up anybody Glory puts in front of him, I have to say, this would be my preferred scenario. Given the remarkable success of Israel Adesanya, Cédric Doumbé should recognize that the sport of MMA can quickly become a more prestigious platform for elite kickboxers, should they develop their ancillary skills. Doumbé has everything in place to achieve similar success to his forebearer, Adesanya. In some ways, Cédric Doumbé might possess an even more directly applicable striking style to MMA than Adesanya, since the Frenchman is so acutely capable of punishing subtle, noncommittal entries of his opponents, and possesses such distinct proficiency in the pocket, both on the lead and on the counter. Under the right tutelage, there is no telling how high his ceiling could be.
Whatever happens, all eyes will be on the champion at Glory 76 and his next move necessitates close watching.