From the electric atmosphere of the Adidas Arena to Paris, supporters who screaming his name, commandments of the referee, Modibo Diakité heard only a wave buzzing on Friday, February 14, when, after three rounds in the center of the multipurpose room, he beat his opponent by unanimous decision during his first professional fight.
Born in Sèvres (Hauts-de-Seine) twenty-two years ago, the young man comes, this winter evening, having made a nickname: “Silent King”. Modibo is the first hearing fighter to enter and overcome in the cage of a professional fight of MMA (mixed martial arts). At the dawn of his career, to all those who crossed it and who believed that his handicap was an obstacle to his ambitions, “” [il] watch that[’il] little[t] do it “he said, tight fists and jovial smile. But the path was long.
Silence weighed heavily during the first years of Modibo’s childhood. Son of a handler father and a mother assistant mother, both from Mali, he is schooling at 3 years old in a nursery school in Ville-d’Avray (Hauts-de-Seine). In classrooms as in the playground, Modibo must already fight to assert himself. “With the hearing, it was horriblehe recalls. Everyone was talking to me, and I didn’t understand anything. »» Behind the gates From the school, the boy crosses several years of isolation before joining, in primary, the Gustave-Baguer Institute, in Asnières (Hauts-de-Seine), specializing in the schooling of hearing deficients.
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