At the age of 19 Gautier moved more than 3,500 miles to Manchester from Cameroon.<\/p>\n
He left behind six siblings, his mother and the only world he knew to join Manchester Top Team, where UFC featherweight Lerone Murphy also trains.<\/p>\n
If the cats – gifted to him by his coach Carl Prince – were supposed to provide Gautier with a sense of comfort after moving, his performances suggest it is a plan that has worked, with three first-round finishes in 2025.<\/p>\n
Such success has put him in a position to transform the lives of his family in Cameroon, most notably by allowing his mother to retire later buying her dream home.<\/p>\n
UFC commentator Joe Rogan recently praised Gautier’s “terrifying power, super speed and excellent technique” and hailed him as the “future” of the division. <\/p>\n
“I always say the sky is my only limit. I haven’t taken off yet. I’m still on the ground, so I need to push myself harder,” says Gautier. <\/p>\n
But even after winning nine of his 10 fights since turning professional in 2021, Gautier says he struggles with self-doubt.<\/p>\n
“I see myself so low that sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and think, ‘I need to train – I’m not that good’,” he says.<\/p>\n
“I look at people like Michael Jackson and wonder how he reached that level, and why can’t I get there too? What’s blocking me?<\/p>\n
“It’s the same with Muhammad Ali and Cristiano Ronaldo. How did they get there? It didn’t happen in one day – it took years of hard work. <\/p>\n
“They didn’t win all the time, but when they lost it was a lesson. If that’s the mindset, you can never truly lose. Muhammad Ali lost, and after that he became so special.<\/p>\n
“In 100 years I want people to say, ‘I want to be like Ateba’. Not just one person – many people.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At the age of 19 Gautier moved more than 3,500 miles to Manchester from Cameroon. He left behind…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":423070,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,785,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-423069","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-fighting","11":"tag-mma","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=423069"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423069\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/423070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=423069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=423069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=423069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}