Gerard Gordeau

Gerard Gordeau is one of those fighters who belongs to a genuinely wild chapter of combat sports history. A 6'5" Dutch savateur and karateka from The Hague, he somehow became one of the first faces the world ever saw in the UFC — his match against Teila Tuli on November 12, 1993 was literally the opening fight of the very first televised UFC event, and it was as brutal and chaotic as you'd expect from the no-rules-era. Before all that, he'd already earned the 1991 World Savate Championship and held the Dutch Karate title for eight straight years, which is genuinely impressive even outside the MMA context. The guy was a journeyman across disciplines — karate, kickboxing, savate, pro wrestling — at a time when that kind of cross-training was almost unheard of. He's not a household name now, but if you care about where MMA actually started, Gordeau was right there at ground zero.

Name (English)

Gerard Gordeau

Name (Japanese)

ジェラルド・ゴルドー

Reading

じぇらるど・ごるどー

Born

March 30, 1956 (age 70)

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Aries / Monkey

Origin

The Hague, Netherlands

Height

196 cm

Occupation

mixed martial arts fighter / professional wrestler / karateka / kickboxer

Motto

Private

• Official sitehttp://www.gerardgordeau.weebly.com
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%B8%E3%82%A7%E3%83%A9%E3%83%AB%E3%83%89%E3%83%BB%E3%82%B4%E3%83%AB%E3%83%89%E3%83%BC

Tags

• mixed martial arts fighter
• professional wrestler
• karateka

Last updated

2026-06-02

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.