Charles Jourdain is eager to make his mark in the UFC bantamweight division.
Jourdain (17-8-1 MMA, 8-7-1 UFC) has notched two straight wins since moving down to 135 pounds, following a difficult run at featherweight. “Air” Jourdain suffered back-to-back defeats inside the Octagon in 2024, the second a stoppage loss to the highly touted Jean Silva, and that setback ultimately convinced him to make the switch.
“I'm not looking at my past experience at featherweight as a bad thing,” Jourdain told Ariel Helwani on Tuesday. “I think I was forged in a different fire. So now, the run at 35 will be quite different than the run at 45 and 55. So yeah, it just happened when I lost to Jean Silva, (who) is a very good, very strong fighter. It was the only time in my life I got TKO'd, and I realized, ‘okay, there's too much of a gap. I cannot rehydrate to 152, 153 pounds and fight these guys who look like 170, 175-ish.’ So yeah, Jean knocked some sense into me of going to 135!”
Jourdain got off to a strong start in his new weight class with a guillotine finish over Victor Henry when the UFC visited Edmonton in his native Canada last year. He repeated the feat when the promotion returned to Vancouver earlier this month, needing less than a round to force a tap from U.K. veteran Davey Grant.
With two wins and a Performance of the Night bonus in his back pocket, the 29-year-old is now looking upward toward the UFC rankings, with No. 15–ranked Marcus McGhee squarely in his sights.
“I don't feel like he's called out by a lot of (people) because he just had a very competitive fight with Peter Yan, and not a lot of people make competitive fights with Peter Yan,” Jourdain said of McGhee. “And I like his style. I think the first time I (saw him) I was like, ‘okay, I need to fight this guy one day,’ is when he finished Gaston Bolanos. Seeing a striker like McGhee destroy an artist like Gaston, I was like, ‘okay, I need to try my striking against him.’
“Of course, it's MMA fight, but as soon as I saw this fight, even as a 145-er, I was like, ‘I need to get my hands on this guy one day.’ I think fate is working in mysterious ways. That would be interesting. There's also Kyler Phillips, who's number 14, and we'll see what the UFC says. If I can knock on the door of the top 15, I would be quite happy.”
