The language barrier might be steep, but Manon Fiorot speaks the universal language fluently whenever she steps in the cage to fight. Hailing from Nice, on the French Riviera, she was shipped over to face the 25-year-old Erin Blanchfield in Atlantic City last June, in a fight — let’s just be honest — she was being set up to lose.
The devil was in the details. Blanchfield was a decade younger, undefeated and from New Jersey. Nobody wanted to fight her, especially on the Jersey Shore. She was supposed to punch her own ticket to a flyweight title shot by going right through Fiorot, who had been quietly dominant herself, having taken out Rose Namajunas in her previous fight in Paris.