Last week, during the announcement of
Wanderlei
Silva's induction into the UFC Hall of Fame, I saw many fans
and even journalists surprised by the honor. Considering that the
great majority of MMA audiences today are under 35 years old, this
becomes completely understandable; after all, they were under 16
years old between 1999 and 2005 and likely did not have the
privilege of following Silva’s reign as it took place.
Undoubtedly the most dominant light heavyweight of the
Pride Fighting Championships era, Silva’s records speak for
themselves. He had the most wins (22), the most knockouts (15), the
most knockdowns (18) and the most significant strikes in Pride
history (720), the longest undefeated fight streak (20 fights) and
the longest middleweight title reign (1,939 days). It is no
coincidence that “The Axe Murderer” was also known in Japan as “Mr.
Pride.”
Fans who only got to know Silva in the last years of his career in
the
Ultimate Fighting Championship when he accumulated more defeats
than victories and feuded with his boss, Dana White, may not know
that Silva influenced an entire generation that came after him,
mainly due to his aggressive style that made Chute Boxe famous
worldwide. That fabled team would, in the following years, launch
many more icons of the sport including
Mauricio
“Shogun” Rua,
Anderson
Silva,
Cristiane
“Cyborg” Justino, and
Charles
Oliveira, but Silva was the first to be recognized outside of
Brazil.
I had the honor of witnessing the birth of this sporting legend at
the
IVC
2 one-night tournament on Sept. 15, 1997, in the fancy Maksoud
Plaza hotel in Sao Paulo.
To remember that historic night, it is worth contextualizing it.
Considered the bloodiest event in the world, the
International Vale Tudo Championship was a show
organized by Brazilian promoter
Sergio
Batarelli between 1997 and 2001. In those five years, Batarelli
held 14 editions of the show, releasing some of the greatest
exponents of world MMA at that time such as Silva,
Jose “Pele”
Landi-Jons and
Johil de
Oliveira, who usually stood out in eight-man tournaments where
to be champion it was necessary to win three fights in one night
with no gloves and almost no rules.
The first edition of IVC was promoted by Batarelli in the same
place, two months before IVC 2, and featured foreign stars smashing
local fighters. In the heavyweight tournament, Canada’s
Gary
Goodridge defeated
Pedro Otavio
in the final, while American wrestler
Dan Severn beat
Ebenezer
Fontes Braga in a non-tournament superfight.
There was a huge local pressure on Brazilian fighters not to allow
that North American dominance again. The fact is that, after the
success of the first two editions, IVC started to be respected
worldwide. Whoever managed to stand out in the bloodiest event on
the planet would soon be pinched by the two biggest events in the
world (Pride and UFC).
IVC events were so violent that no matter how accustomed I was to
covering vale tudo events from ringside, there wasn't an edition
that I wasn't impacted—many times with my photographer's vest duly
splashed with blood, as occurred at that historic IVC 2.
A Blood-Spattered Photographer's Vest
As usual, Batarelli made a point of balancing the bracket well at
IVC 2, placing the favorites from Brazil and the USA on opposite
sides. Backstage, Batarelli confided in me that he considered
American wrestler
Sean Bormet
the favorite in this edition. “This guy is a two-time NCAA. Much
more respected in the world of wrestling than
Mark Kerr and
[Mark]
Coleman. Keep an eye on him because if he beats Pele's training
partner in the first fight, he has everything he needs to reach the
final. On the other side,
Artur
Mariano has two American fighters:
Mark Hall, who
has already fought seven times in the UFC, and
Pat Assalone.
You can expect a lot of knockouts in this tournament,” the promoter
told me excitedly after the rules meeting.
In the first fight of the under-90 kg tournament, Silva, partner of
the already renowned “Pele,” faced the heavily favored RAW Team
athlete, Bormet. In his first takedown attempt, Bormet was repelled
with a series of kicks. The dazed wrestler ended up clinging to the
waist of the referee, who waved the fight off at 1 minute, 19
seconds. Next, Silva beat boxer
Egidio
Amaro da Costa in just 2:27 with punches from inside his guard
to secure his place in the final.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the bracket, muay thai black belt
Artur
Mariano ran over two Americans, first Assalone in just 18
seconds, and then UFC veteran Hall, who had knocked out jiu-jitsu
representative
Luiz Fraga
in the first fight, but dislocated his patella with a kick from
Mariano in the semifinal.
The Best Brazilian Muay Thai Schools Go to War
The final of the second edition of the IVC was a duel between the
top two muay thai schools in Brazil. On one side, Mariano from Rio
de Janeiro, student of Luiz Alves from Boxe Thai, and on the other,
Silva from Curitiba, who was a student of Rudimar Fedrigo of Chute
Boxe. It was 13 minutes and 10 seconds of bloody striking battle,
without a moment on the floor. Thanks to his impressive
aggressiveness in previous fights, Wanderlei won the support of the
fans, who chanted “Ronaldinho” due to his bald head, similar to
that of the “Phenomenon” Ronaldo Nazario, the biggest Brazilian
soccer idol at the time. After four minutes, Silva cornered his
opponent, hitting him with a straight shot. Artur was stunned, but
responded with a barrage of blows, opening a hole in Chute Boxer's
left eyebrow.
Instead of weakening like any other fighter in a state of danger,
Silva multiplied his aggression. Mariano was already bleeding, but
he still landed the best blows, opening the Curitiba native's
eyebrows even further. Yet Silva didn't stop attacking, pushed by
the shouts of “Heeeyyy, Heyyy” from his team members. Wanderlei's
aggressiveness drove the crowd crazy. Mariano was starting to walk
backward when a headbutt opened the cut even further, going down
the entire eyelid surface and blocking Silva's vision. Silva’s
eyebrow looked like a mouth by the time the doctors decided to
interrupt the fight, giving the victory to Artur, to the despair of
the Curitiba native, who wanted more and simply could not accept
the decision, as did the fans who gave him a standing ovation. It
was the first of so many times that I would have the privilege of
watching
Wanderlei
Silva from ringside.
During the 32 years I've been covering this sport, I have rarely
left an event as impacted as I was that night. I remember that I
couldn't sleep a wink during the six-hour bus journey between Sao
Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, so I spent the time hand-writing a report
that would be published in a few weeks in Tatame magazine, where I
tried to justify placing so much emphasis on the runner-up. “The
survival instinct is something inherent in any animal. When sensing
imminent danger, even the most feared predators choose to abandon
combat to preserve their lives. This is something that we all carry
in our DNA. From what he showed today, this new representative of
Chute Boxe seems to have been born without this ‘factory
component.’” Over the next 20 years, that fighting X-Man would
shock the whole world precisely because of that aggressiveness and
total lack of survival instinct. If I had known that, instead of
washing my bloody photographer's vest as soon as I got home, I
would have framed it stained with blood as a trophy for the night I
saw the birth of a Hall of Famer who contributed so much to the
history of MMA.