There are evenings that leave a mark. The evening of Thursday, April 16, 2026, at the Carré d’Or restaurant, Place Magenta in Nice, is one of them. In front of nearly forty spectators gripped by emotion, Christophe Pinna, world karate champion of all categories, recounted his life with disarming sincerity, sharp humor, and deep humanity. The title of his one-man show says it all: It’s Everything but Anecdotal.
Before being a show, this one-man show is therapy. Christophe Pinna confided with total honesty that evening: “When I was diagnosed with cancer and found myself in a hospital bed, the days were long. I thought it might be a good idea to write about my life since until then I had always expressed myself with my body, and I could no longer do that.”
This is how it all begins. Lying in his hospital room, between chemotherapy sessions, he first writes in his head, then on paper as soon as he can sit up. The initial goal is modest, almost intimate: “Initially, the idea was to do three evenings with friends, to tell them: come, let’s take stock of my life, we have dinner together, and then we turn the page.”
It is the meeting with a production company that changes everything. “We are going to make something bigger than just putting words on what you went through for your friends,” they tell him. And so, this evening at the Carré d’Or, about forty people discovered much more than three evenings among friends. They witnessed a public confession, funny and moving. Because behind this one-man show, there is a whole life. And to understand why this athlete has so much to tell, you have to go back to a time when no one would have imagined seeing him as a world champion someday.
From the Rowdy Child to the Pinnacle of the World
It all begins in Nice Nord, in the childhood of a young boy deemed “rowdy” by his primary school teacher. “That simple word, rowdy, ended up directing my whole life,” says Christophe Pinna. On the school’s advice, his parents enrolled him in karate. He went crying, twice a week, in the school gym. But at the age of 7 or 8, something changed. Above his bed, posters of champions. On his left, a globe serving as a bedside lamp. On his right, the bed of his older brother, taller, stronger, more robust. The dream took shape: to become the world champion of all categories. “If I became the world champion of all categories, I would be the champion of both my globe and all the people bigger and stronger than me. That was really my dream.”
The Mother, the Scar, the Dream
Christophe Pinna’s journey would not be spared by life. At 17, he lost his mother, taken by widespread cancer. That evening at the Carré d’Or, when he spoke of the day he returned home alone for the first time, without the smell of cooking, without the folded and ironed karate uniform on his sports bag, several spectators couldn’t hold back their tears. “It was emptiness. I believe it is a scar that never closed.” But as he confides with a philosophy that permeates the entire show: “When I lost my mother, I turned that scar into strength. It carried me throughout my career.”
Leaving for Paris to get ahead of his military service, without money, eating at the Salvation Army then at the Woman’s Palace for one franc a day at the time, he trained with a single obsession. It was during this period that he won his first national and European titles. And every night, before sleeping, he added a phrase to his prayer: “May your will grant that I become the world champion.”
October 14, 2000: A Promise Kept
In 1994 in Kota Kinabalu, in 1996 in Sun City, in 1998 in Rio de Janeiro, Christophe Pinna won the world team title three times, a first in karate history. Individually, he won the World Cup as a light heavyweight in 1993 in Algiers and as a heavyweight in 1997 in Manila. But in all categories, the same pain repeated: three times third. The fractures accumulated. The nose, the arm, the jaw. The tatamis of the world left their marks. Yet, the dream remained intact.
Munich, October 14, 2000. Christophe Pinna was 33. He announced that this would be his last world championship. In the locker room before the final, he described a moment suspended between two lives: “I was torn between the child who dreamed of becoming the world champion and the adult who had to make that dream come true. The worst enemy, at that moment, is the brain: it finds excuses for you to accept losing.”
He won the match 5-1, deliberately dragging out the last seconds to savor it: “It was the last 20 seconds of my life on a mat.” Twenty-five years after dreaming it, he became the world champion of all categories. His father, present in the stands, saw his son lift this title before cancer took him as well. “With hindsight, I am doubly happy: he saw me become the world champion before leaving.”
The Man Behind the Champion
The one-man show doesn’t stop at the medals. Christophe Pinna also recounts his life after sports. First as the national coach for Greece, which he led from ninth to third place in Europe in a year and a half, to an historic final against France. Then as the coach of the American team, which he propelled from eleventh to the world’s first nation in Monterey, an achievement so great that he personally awarded the medals to his athletes, a rare occurrence in the history of world karate. Finally, as a sports teacher at the Star Academy on TF1 for four seasons.
Back in Nice, he joined the mayor’s office and created local sports projects, including one particularly dear to him, I Move with the City of Nice, where he coached residents and had them participate in sporting events.
And then, the unexpected return. When karate was announced at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, a dream enters his mind at 52. He resumed training, competed worldwide, and gradually joined the Olympic rankings. Covid ended this adventure. The Games took place a year later, in 2021. Without him.
“It’s Not a Fight; It’s a Journey”
The last chapter of the show is the most intimate and arguably the strongest. An unremarkable cardiac assessment leads to emergency surgery, then the discovery of cancer. Christophe Pinna recounts the months of chemotherapy, the fatigue, the deep sadness. But most importantly, a conviction: “I don’t fight the disease. It’s medicine that fights it. All I did was face my fears and doubts. It wasn’t a fight but a journey.”
His last chemotherapy session was on March 31, 2026, barely two weeks before this show. He shares with striking lucidity: “I knew I was entering a tunnel without knowing what would be behind it, except that it would be dark. So I wanted to put lights at the exit. That’s why today’s date is so close to the end of my chemo.”
And he concludes with a philosophy summarizing a whole life: “From the operation to the chemotherapy to remission, it belongs to medicine. But from remission to lasting recovery, it belongs to me. All these moments — sadness, joy, doubt, certainty, disillusionment, happiness — are part of my life. This illness is part of my story, but it’s not my story.”
The forty or so spectators present that evening experienced the show with palpable intensity. Anne Lombardo, who only knew Christophe Pinna from his sports persona, shared: “I knew Christophe Pinna as an athlete, not the man. It’s a very beautiful, very touching show because we see the man and the trials he went through. What profoundly touched me is how much the trials allow us to move towards something else, to turn them into strengths. And his final message, where he explains that he wishes it to be anecdotal, I find it very beautiful.”
Pascal Mono, a long-time friend and an artist himself, summed it up with a simplicity that resonates with Christophe’s words: “We don’t realize that it’s a whole life dedicated to his martial art. From the outside, we see a career, titles. In his show, we understand that it’s first and foremost a life. What I’ll remember is that what’s important isn’t what happens to us, but what we do with it. Christophe Pinna isn’t just a fighter; he’s also a sage.”
It’s Everything but Anecdotal is also playing to sold-out audiences on Thursday, April 16, Friday, April 17, and Saturday, April 18, 2026, at the Carré d’Or restaurant in Nice, before potentially opening new dates.
