MMA: “First touch, I’m KO”, Fernand Lopez’s ex-wife describes the violence she was victim of

2023-10-07 12:55:13

After his victory against Jordan Zébo on September 30, MMA fighter Cédric Doumbé accused Fernand Lopez, his former coach and his opponent’s trainer of violence against his ex-wife Cécile Giornelli. After reacting initially on Instagram, the latter recounted for Brut two acts of violence of which she was the victim.

The testimony begins with the day of July 13, 2018. “There was a little confusion, a little family tension. And for the first time in five years as a couple, I dared to say a bad word to him. When his own wife said to him, “Fuck you,” he couldn’t stand it,” the dietitian recalls.

In the process, Fernand Lopez gives him a slap that Cécile Giornelli describes as “a fairground breeze block”, with the bottom of his hand. “First touch, I’m knocked out,” she explains. Fernand Lopez’s ex-wife remembers that it was the cries of their daughter, at the time aged a year and a half, which woke her up.

Awakened by her daughter’s cries

For these facts, which he admitted in an interview with Le Parisien, Fernand Lopez was sentenced to four months in prison. In this same interview, he explained that his ex-partner was also violent towards him. At Brut, Cécile Giornelli speaks of blows on her chest “in a pathetic way” after discovering “yet another deception” by her husband. She also admits to having spanked Fernand Lopez’s daughter, which she regrets.

“I’m knocked out, it’s our daughter’s cries that wake me up.”
For the first time, Cécile Giornelli recounts the violence she suffered at the hands of her ex-companion, Fernand Lopez.
Cédric Doumbè raised the subject after his last MMA fight. pic.twitter.com/J81mSftuZ4

— Brut FR (@brutofficiel) October 6, 2023

Cécile Giornelli then returns to an evening in February 2019 during which the coach told her that he was leaving her. After asking how to organize things for their daughter, Fernand Lopez allegedly went “crazy”. “He spoke for 25 or 30 minutes, gesticulating in all directions. I feel this violence rising,” she testifies more than four years later. Lopez would have moved closer to her to press his forehead against hers. “I don’t show it, but I’m scared. »

Around one o’clock in the morning that evening, Cécile Giornelli explains that she went to the balcony to telephone Cédric Doumbé with whom she claims to have only a friendly relationship. “I need a voice that comforts me, that reassures me,” she tells Brut. While she is on the line, Cécile Giornelli explains that Fernand Lopez came to the balcony, snatched the phone from her hands and gave her an arm lock. His ex-wife says she wanted to call the police from the landline, but her ex-husband “blasted her to the ground.”

“I have no cell phone, no landline… I have no means. There, I feared for my life,” explains the dietitian. On the other side of the line, Cédric Doumbé hears the scene and calls the police to Cécile Giornelli’s home. “That’s how he saved my life,” summarizes Cécile Giornelli.

At the end of the interview, she denounces the “omerta” that reigns in the world of combat sports. “They know that if they speak out, it’s the end of their career. We are facing someone powerful in the media, in relationships…”, she concludes, speaking of Fernand Lopez.