{"id":121464,"date":"2025-09-05T09:18:18","date_gmt":"2025-09-05T09:18:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/121464\/"},"modified":"2025-09-05T09:18:18","modified_gmt":"2025-09-05T09:18:18","slug":"ufc-paris-benoit-saint-denis-protected-presidents-and-fought-terrorists-before-ufc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/121464\/","title":{"rendered":"UFC Paris: Benoit Saint-Denis protected presidents and fought terrorists before UFC"},"content":{"rendered":"

Saint-Denis, who was born in Nimes, southern France, formed part of the French Army Special Forces when he joined aged 18.<\/p>\n

“Most of my work as a Special Force operator was in the sub-Saharan area. So Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger. I was mostly there against Boko Haram,” says Saint-Denis.<\/p>\n

Boko Haram is a militant Islamist group,<\/a> designated as a terrorist organisation by the United Kingdom, which operates in countries such as Nigeria, Niger and Mali.<\/p>\n

Saint-Denis’ work largely involved working in counter-terrorism to combat the threat of groups like Boko Haram.<\/p>\n

“When we are talking about counter-terrorism, it’s going to be the arrest or the destruction of terrorist threats. Or stopping terrorist extractions in cities like Timbuktu, for example,” Saint-Denis says.<\/p>\n

His team were also tasked with protecting important members of the French government, like Hollande, during foreign visits.<\/p>\n

Saint-Denis looks back on his time in the French military fondly.<\/p>\n

“It was long and fatiguing and demanding, and after this I think I was a man – I was disciplined, and I knew how to work to get things done,” he says.<\/p>\n

“It was very adventurous, and I loved it.”<\/p>\n

Fighting terrorism and competing in the UFC are vastly different worlds with pressures of their own, but Saint-Denis does not have to dwell for long when deciding which is tougher.<\/p>\n

“It depends on the occasion, but globally, I would say being a UFC fighter,” he adds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Saint-Denis, who was born in Nimes, southern France, formed part of the French Army Special Forces when he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":121465,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,638,82],"class_list":["post-121464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121464"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121464\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/121465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}