Alexander Volkanovski, Kai Kara-France and Israel Adesanya
Kai Kara-France is scheduled to face Brandon Moreno in a rematch at UFC 277 – how tall is he?
City Kickboxing has produced some of the freshest crop of talent in recent times. With two champions hailing from their ranks inside the UFC, bantamweight fighter Kai Kara-France is destined to create history by becoming the first Oceania bantamweight champion. He faces a tough assignment at the hands of former champion Brandon Moreno, who has already beat him once at UFC 245.
Kara-France started practicing Brazilian jiu-jitsu at the age of 10 but stopped after two years. He was bullied earlier in his life for his small stature in high school – Mount Albert Grammar School. This encouraged him to resume training mixed martial arts as a whole. Kara-France attended Unitec Institute of Technology for a spell, but dropped out. He is partly of Maori ancestry.
In November 2010, Kara-France began his professional MMA career in his home city of Auckland, New Zealand, with a first-round TKO win over Ray Kaitiana.
Kara-France decided to drop out of the university after seeing a Facebook post promoting Tiger Muay Thai gym scholarship. He applied to the gym and was awarded the scholarship after try-outs. He moved to Phuket, Thailand, in 2013 where he trained and built his mixed martial arts record by fighting around Asia and The Pacific.
He stands at 5 ft. 5 in (1.65 m) tall and has a reach of 69 in (175 cm).
Kara-France was signed by the UFC in July 2018 and eventually made his UFC debut on December 1, 2018 at UFC Fight Night: dos Santos vs. Tuivasa against Ashkan Mokhtarian. However, on November 21, 2018, Moktarian was pulled from the fight, citing an injury, and he was replaced by Elias Garcia. After both fighters getting knocked down, Kara-France won the fight via unanimous decision.Both fighters were awarded US$50,000 Fight of the Night bonuses.
Two months later, Kara-France faced Raulian Paiva on February 10, 2019 at UFC 234. He won the fight via split decision.
Kara-France faced Mark De La Rosa on August 31, 2019 at UFC Fight Night: Andrade vs. Zhang. He won the fight via unanimous decision.
The Kiwi has fought inside the UFC nine times, and has a record of 7 wins and 2 losses inside the octagon.
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