Author: By Martins Denis

A mixed martial arts career is basically the same for many competitors around the world. Before joining the mainstream of the sport, you have to pass through a bunch of different scenarios in all aspects of the sport, with the traditional road of defeats, victories, draws and no contests surrounded by crazy and dramatic stories which forge the fighters for the next big step.

However, only a handful of men, or maybe only Luis “Beicao” Ramos – the newcomer who debuts at UFC RIO this weekend against fellow countryman Erick Silva, won a fight by taking a beatdown.

No, you didn’t read that the wrong way – the first MMA bout for the Nova Uniao member saw Ramos score his first victory by eating strike after strike.

“Let me explain first,” he opens up by defending himself. “In a sequence of changes I ended up fighting a heavier guy after I cut weight to face the original opponent. Plus, with no MMA experience, it made my night a long one when someone mounted and smashed my face.”

Rogério Sagate, a 192 pound fighter, pounded on Ramos from the mount position for at least five minutes. The debutant opted for a suicidal strategy by clinching the bigger and stronger opponent, who dragged him to the ground, falling in mount. For Ramos, the plan was simple – fight fire with fire, landing strikes from the bottom. But as the guy on top connected more, to Ramos’ credit he never thought about surrender.

“I was very nervous, and I think because of it I didn’t try to exchange from the outside and instead I tried to body lock him; I didn’t want to be knocked out badly in my first fight,” Ramos said. “But the guy was 100 times stronger than me and controlled me easily. He busted my face for five uninterrupted minutes and gassed out. He gave up by exhaustion.”

It was one of those cases where you’re a bit reluctant to say “a win is a win.” But Ramos took the traumatic experience with a smile on a damaged face, as he explained how he won his first fight while hearing the laughs of his teammates who were in the arena.

“That fight was two eight minute rounds and I was prepared to sustain the punishment until an opening came. Anyway, the fight changed my life.”

Of course it changed it, because the then-Ruas VT system fighter wanted to taste a real victory. He waited nearly two years until he stepped into an MMA ring again, so before that, it was time for a little more sharpening of his game.

The kid who started Muay Thai workouts with the Barros Bros (Aloisio (ZST vet.) and Alexandre (UFC vet.)) in the mid-90s, gained notoriety from his first two masters due to his dedication and will power. The brothers were pupils of UFC 7 champion Marco Ruas, so joining the recently built Ruas VT System was a consequence of the hard work of Ramos.

Training wrestling and Muay Thai at RVT and Luta livre in Budokan, Ramos recalls those
times. The sport was still looking for its identity – no holds barred or MMA – so the sparring sessions followed whatever was demanded. Different gloves, or no gloves, and small pads with guys like Pedro Rizzo, Renato Sobral, Gustavo Machado, Rodrigo Ruas, Marcos Ruas and the Barros bros were a lot to deal with for a teenager with a lot of heart.

“It reminds me of sore shins, bruises and a lot of lessons that came with the suffering,” he laughs. “The training finished and I badly wanted tomorrow to come quickly because I wanted to spar again.”

You can imagine that this guy was now ready to dispatch his next opponent. But it didn’t work out like that. By accepting a second fight in a category that he didn’t belong (198 pounds), Ramos lost once again, by decision. The taste of a real victory only came in 2004, when he decided to be a welterweight and smashed his opponent in mere 1:00 of combat.

The decision of fighting as a 170 pounder seemed to cure what was lacking in Ramos’ career. He lost the fight after that first win, but then compiled a 7-1 record, avenging his
only defeat to the Pride Bushido veteran Luciano Azevedo.

Ramos was struggling a lot to put together a good winning streak during his career, and after a good run in the 2005-2006 season, he grabbed a four fight sequence three years
later. One of Ramos’ triumphs was superb – a second round TKO over the then untouchable South American Shooto 168 pound champion, Igor Fernandes.

Things were right where they should be until powerful strikes decimated Ramos as he accepted a fight 20 days later and paid for it by being KO’d in 50 seconds.

“Some asked if I underestimated Pedro Iriê and took a KO because of it, but I just was confident he wasn’t going to whoop me. All merits for him, I needed to get back to the
gym and train.”

That wasn’t the only reason to get back to the gym, as Ramos was sent to the finish line for those Brazilians who wanted an international opportunity. Once he beat Fernandes, the Shooto promoters wanted to know how he would fight with the belt on the line. Ramos took the opportunity, becoming the champion by beating a tough guy named Marcelo Brito in 2009, and then meeting Fernandes again. This time it was for the Shooto belt.

“I should have fought (submission ace) Shinya Aoki, but he dropped weight,” he said. “Takuya Wada and Shiko Yamashita were well ranked but had other commitments; the next after them was my teammate Hernani Perpetuo, so I ended up facing Fernandes for the third time.”

The fight wasn’t good though, as both guys knew each other very well, making the bout a
complicated chess match. It was a better scenario for Ramos, who came across like the champion after the three rounder.

He lost once again after that fight via decision by not taking the aggressor’s role against UFC vet Roan Carneiro in Holland. And that last defeat was crucial to Ramos staying
confident in what his coaches tell him all the time.

“Late Carlson Gracie Sr black belt Ari Galo, André Pederneiras, the Barros bros, and José
Aldo say to me, ‘trust in your Brazilian Jiu-jitsu, your takedowns, your strikes – trust your potential,'” he said. “Of course I wanted to finish fights all the time, but something holds me. I’m entering the UFC with a good mindset to not allow the lack of aggressiveness to be an Achilles heel.”

By what we saw in his last three fights, the man learned from these tips, winning a four man tournament and then submitting his last opponent. So Ramos now enters the Octagon against Silva in a very interesting matchup. Even though they’re debutants, Silva trains with “Minotauro” Nogueira, Anderson Silva, Rafael Cavalcante, Ronado “Jacaré” Souza and Rogerio “Minotouro” Nogueira among others. Ramos has heavy artillery by his side too, with Jose Aldo, Ronny Markes, Diego Nunes, Renan Barao, Johnny Eduardo, Marlon Sandro and many others. This can not only be a battle of who won’t feel the jitters and move well after the first step, but a challenge of who absorbed more experience from their well-rounded peers before the opening bell.

“This will be a test of fire for both of us,” Ramos said. “I know Silva well, and we met before in wrestling competitions, but participated in different weight classes. Maybe he has the small advantage of training for this fight for the last 90 days, and I’ve been preparing for around 20. But I want to prove my point like he does as well, so the time has come, let’s do it!”

The Northeast of Brazil. It’s a place where many events happen, and many fighters appear, but only a few reach the mainstream, get a bit of popularity, or have their name considered among the great fighters.

Even today, we still see some guys struggling to prove that their records have more fights than those shown on the internet in order to get that dream opportunity to fight internationally. There are examples like Thiago “Pitbull” Alves and Gleison Tibau, who are currently top contenders in the toughest UFC divisions, but before that both suffered, battled and emerged from the small circuit of Brazil’s Northeast.

The latest to break out is UFC newcomer Ronny Markes, who makes his Octagon debut against Czech powerhouse Karlos Vemola in a preliminary bout on Sunday’s UFC Live card in Milwaukee. The 23-yearold product of Kimura/Nova Uniao, a warrior factory in Brazil, battled through the same difficulties which all men trying to be athletes have to survive before turning pro – but one thing he didn’t experience was having his first MMA fight at home like his pioneer peers. Instead, he fought outside Brazil.

“MMA was something I wanted to be in, and before my first MMA fight I didn’t have enough money, as Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and Submission events don’t have high awards, so I worked like a bouncer while I was still an amateur,” he said. “I knew a group of Spanish tourists who were visiting the city. They went to the night club I worked at and they had an academy in Madrid in 2006, so the invitation they gave me was the start for me.”

Okay, we know Spain isn’t known as a Mecca for MMA yet, but for Ronny that was a golden opportunity to make money teaching the gentle art, while learning the culture of the Old Continent. Reaching Spain, the Brazilian met countryman and former UFC fighter Fabricio “Vai Cavalo” Werdum and his brother Felipe, and Markes’ saga begun. At that time, the 19-year old native of Natal, Rio Grande do Norte wasn’t scheduled to fight yet, however, the doors were opened for him when a Werdum student couldn’t fight and Markes was in the right place at the right time.

“I remember Felipe’s words exactly: ‘Hey kid, do you have the courage to step in?’ That was my chance to show the BJJ I developed in the Kimura/Nova Uniao gym and I accepted without hesitation,” he said. “I fought against a Frenchman with five fights, and thank God I beat him.”

The 2007 fight in Europe was the start of the MMA journey for the young Brazilian. That same kid couldn’t study BJJ when he was younger, because even though his uncle was a practitioner and Markes admired him a lot, his parents didn’t like the idea of the family’s joy training and he just had his first contact with the mat at the age of 15 with professor Iranilson.

The fame of the Kimura/Nova Uniao gym attracted the attention of Markes, and he wanted to train with them. But the main obstacle for the kid was the subscription fee of the gentle art classes. Either he paid for his round trip bus fare from home to the academy, or he paid the academy; both were an impossible mission.

“Jair Lourenco (Kimura/Nova Uniao founding member) gave me permission to train for free, and I’m very thankful to him. He only asked me for dedication and perseverance in training.”

A runner-up in National BJJ competition,a multiple time State of Rio Grande do Norte champion and winner of numerous submission awards (conquering his weight and the absolute divisions) showed that the confidence of Lourenco, and by that time the support that his parents gave him, were integral in building a tough competitor.

But tough men are proven to be real tough when they drive onto the toughest roads, and when Markes was traveling back and forth from Spain to resolve his working papers, he tore his right knee’s ACL and his world crumbled. The setback not only interrupted his future, but put the man in check.

While thinking how to get a surgery to fix himself up, he entered into a depression. Markes lived a hell for around one and half years, but in the group of Spanish friends who gave Markes his chance to move to Europe was Carlos Copado, who paid for the surgery for the Brazilian to keep his career going.

“Copado is a fight fan who didn’t forget his friend when I needed him,” he said. “He supported not only me, but my teammates like Renan Barao (UFC bantamweight). And Copado always said I could be with the best. Paying my surgery was really important, however his motivation was what really pumped me up.”

Excited to get back to the action after more than 400 days on the sidelines was a huge challenge for Markes. Reluctant, but determined, he returned with an easy win by submission – surviving the jitters of his re-debut. Smashing guys one after the other, Markes compiled an admirable 10-1 record. The defeat, when he got armbarred last year, happened on what Markes says was his opponent’s night, not taking any credit from his foe.

Young fighters learn from defeats, and Markes did, but in fact, his last fight before joining the UFC was the one which really showed his maturity, as he prevailed in a “killing the ghosts” situation. As a better explanation, for a man who mirrored his style after Ricardo Arona and Paulo Filho, facing the latter in Brazil was something he never imagined. But the time had come.

“I faced it (fan facing idol) professionally, because we know to be the man, you need to beat the man,” he said of his fight against the former WEC middleweight champion. “The first round I beat him up, and I imagined he’d return damaged for the second (Laughs). He came stronger.”

Filho worked his natural wrestling ability in connection with his super judo throws and excellent BJJ to score a takedown and return the punishment. And under a tough rain of strikes, Markes got the lesson that he needs to be successful in the UFC. Hear the corner.

“He smashed me,” Markes says. “But I could hear my cornermen well, and they guided me to keep the calm and pass through the toughness of the second round assault to shine in third and overwhelm him by unanimous decision.”

After the fight, which changed his life, he’s now going to even more important fights. Joining a big league like the UFC, Markes is putting his name with the best on the planet. So taking on a six-time Czech Republic national wrestling champion in Vemola, he expects to make all the blood, sweat, and tears pay off with a victory inside the Octagon.

“I was much too anxious in the past, and my wife helped to slow me down. Perhaps if I joined the UFC before, I wouldn’t sleep for the weeks prior to Sunday the 14th,” he said. But I’m surrounded by great people – my coach Lourenco, Andre Pederneiras, my strength and physical coach Thiago Macedo. So I feel ready.”

“I know Vemola has the Octagon experience, and he likes to keep pressure on from the beginning to finish the fights in the first round. I’ll be alert from the very first second of the fight looking to surprise him on the counter-attacks. He’s a wrestling specialist, a tough ground and pounder, but I’m a BJJer and I can grab whatever he offers me when the fight hits the mat.”

Some of the signals we make with our hands or arms speak for themselves without further verbal explanation. You know what a thumbs up or thumbs down means, and a hands up, closed fist normally signifies that you are ready to go in a toe-to-toe challenge. But other moves display much more than we can see or understand.

Heavyweight knockout artist Junior “Cigano” dos Santos, who takes on Shane Carwin in the main event of this weekend’s UFC 131 event in Vancouver, has provided us with some interesting pre and post fight signals.

Observing dos Santos since his very first UFC fight against Fabricio Werdum at UFC 90 back in October of 2008, when his name is announced by Bruce Buffer, he walks to the middle of the Octagon, looks at his foe and then points to the ground. Coming from a guy like the heavy-handed dos Santos, this means “you’re going down,” as the KO machine has ‘grounded’ nine adversaries in 12 victories. But if you pay more attention to this heavyweight contender, you’ll see that after his victories he crosses him arms in front of his chest in a move which is a little more mysterious until the explains that it means that his mission is “completely completed.”

“This comes from Bahia, from a boy named ‘Buguinha’; he’s a 15-year old who trains since he was younger with professor [Luiz] Dorea and fights in amateur boxing,” said dos Santos. “He has very quick and lethal hands, and every time he won a fight, he crossed one arm in front of the chest saying, ‘I cut him.’ That means he spanked the guy and it became his trademark. I starting using it and nobody understood it, so crossing both arms mean you cut each piece of your opponent.” (Laughs)

If you didn’t see the move, don’t worry, you may have picked the wrong fight, as dos Santos didn’t always provide it for various reasons. If it was after the Werdum bout due to the happiness of his first victory inside the cage or after a punishing win over the legendary Mirko Cro Cop due to the anti-climatic ending, one fight in particular he couldn’t do it after was his last one against Roy ‘Big Country’ Nelson.

For the first time ever dos Santos didn’t win by finishing, as if the Nelson’s belly was able to absorb all the knees and fists, while the TUF 10 winner’s iron chin took the rest. But the win wasn’t a step back for the Brazilian – who looked for the knockout from the first minute of the fight until the 15th.

“I’m very confident in my boxing. [UFC light heavyweight] Fabio Maldonado once told me, and it was nice to hear from a pro boxer, that if I keep an eye-to-eye focus with my foe, he can’t touch me,” he said. “And I believe it. I go forward and I look for the knockout in every fight. Okay, it doesn’t mean I’ll KO all the guys, like what happened in the Nelson fight, but my objective is to drop all the guys in front of me.”

If dos Santos couldn’t emulate Buguinha’s signal of mission complete after UFC 117, the celebration for the victory – being presented with a title shot – was a certainty. It was a place he had searched for since his first fight in the UFC two years ago, and last August he knew that his next fight would have the desired UFC heavyweight belt on the line against champion Cain Velasquez.

However an injury which kept Velasquez sidelined from competition for around six months was announced last December, putting the Brazilian in waiting mode for some time. It was time to process things and keep his focus in the face of unexpected bad news, as he wasn’t going to be fighting for the title anytime soon.

“I always kept the focus; it was what I learned to do,” he said. “Dorea taught me that we need to be prepared for everything because we don’t know what can happen. Of course I was disappointed; I qualified myself to be a challenger, I reached the place where all heavyweights want to be and I’ll need to wait a bit more now. I’ll do another kind of fight and the motivation is different, but it is still big because I haven’t competed in the last 10 months. My training was good and now I’m close to my next bout, this time against Shane Carwin. And I think my motivation will be the key factor inside the Octagon.”

And when a door is shut, another is opened – and while dos Santos didn’t have a rumored opponent initially, a slot as a coach on TUF 13 arose, and the challenger would meet former champ Brock Lesnar as the opposing coach. This stellar opportunity would soothe him for not having an immediate title match, and it would also help boost dos Santos’ image, giving fans a chance to know and learn more about him.

“It was an excellent situation, because [coaching] was a different type of challenge. Since I started fighting I have had things like that surprising me all the time in the fight world,” dos Santos said. “This participation on TUF was fantastic; my English wasn’t 100%, but the UFC trusted in my potential and I faced it, thanks God! Like all challenges, I don’t regret them, I face them and I think I did well.”

Yet there would be more changes, as Lesnar dealt with another bout with diverticulitis, rendering him unable to fight on June 11th. So now the native of Cacador will face former interim heavyweight champion Shane Carwin. But the change hasn’t rattled dos Santos.

“I don’t see it like a big change because a fight is a fight and we need to be prepared for everything,” he said. “The modification here is an adaptation to Carwin and his heavy hands, but I think it’s only that. I’m prepared for him. People will see how good my camp was inside the Octagon by what I’ll display.”

The switch may have been lucky for some, bad luck for others. While Carwin was taking on first timer John-Olav Einemo on the main card of this same UFC 131 event, Lesnar and dos Santos would be main eventers. But the world kept turning, the ex-champ left the card due to illness and Carwin now ‘only’ has ‘Cigano’ between him and a title bout. Fate’s conspiracy? Dos Santos doesn’t believe so, saying everything happens for a reason.

“Carwin is an excellent athlete, he deserves respect and I respect him. I have luck in my career too. Since the very beginning I was among the tops. I think I’m a guy with huge luck and it all gives me good experience preparing myself for fighting great names,” said ‘Cigano,’ or ‘Gypsy’ (In English) if you prefer. “So I’m gaining experience, my body is adapting itself for it, and I’m more intelligent in fighting and more comfortable stepping up into the Octagon every day. I think at the moment I get my title fight again, if God permits this year, I’ll be very prepared. And one more time I will be working hard to give my best in order to bring the belt here to Brazil.”

**Paula Sack contributed to this article

The first impression we have about a particular person may be different than the one you get when talking to him, and sometimes what looks bad may be good in reality, and vice-versa.

Brazil’s Diego “The Gun” Nunes, one of the most talented featherweights on the planet, knows this kind of situation well. Training in different academies until ending up at Nova Uniao, a team he calls family, Nunes – who faces former lightweight title challenger and debuting 145-pounder Kenny Florian this weekend in Vancouver –  experienced being the victim of wrong impressions by those who didn’t know him well.

Handsome to the girls, the kid from Caxias do Sul says bullying was a constant for him while he was still at school because his jealous classmates thought Nunes only did it to provoke them. Today, the fighter still deals with that misunderstanding, as his tattoos, easy going personality and good sense of humor lead him to be described as a “crazy playboy” rather than the nice and religious person he is.

“I have been under that and other labels more when I was young than now,” Nunes said. “From school until that first day of training inside a new academy, I noticed that a few observed me a different way than I really was. Going through those difficulties early in my life was an education for processing it without problems.”

Listening to Nunes more and more, we see an extreme difference between funny and crazy. The plans of the 28-year old pupil of Andre Pederneiras were always very focused on starting a family along his wife Sabrina, a woman he says comes from God’s wishes, and whose plans matched his own.

“Since I started my martial arts life I was alone,” he says, not only referring to being without a girlfriend, but without many friends and family around. “I didn’t have affection from a girlfriend or a loyal friendship, so I asked God to put on my road a girl like this, and like that He sent me my wife about three years ago. She’s a person who completes me. My dream was always to have a family; I visualized this picture of me, my wife and kid, which we intend to have as soon as I acquire a more stabilized fighting career.”

A solid career means beating foe after foe until reaching the title picture, and Nunes, a former WEC featherweight, has been good at it. Dropping only one fight since he turned professional (a unanimous decision loss to L.C. Davis), “The Gun” dispatched 15 adversaries until the WEC’s merge into UFC.

Earlier this year, he stepped in the Octagon for the first time to square off against former WEC featherweight champion Mike Brown at UFC 125. The fight was expected to be a war, and the result, a split decision victory for the Brazilian, indicated that. With a left eyelid completely swollen since the half of first stanza due to Brown’s strikes, Nunes dodged further harm while trading bombs and avoiding the takedown attempts of the former champion. The damage of first round seemed to be the injection of life he needed, as Nunes came back strong with axe and spinning kicks in rounds two and three.

“I loved kicking since a kid, and I got into kung-fu and tae kwon do classes before my pro training with kickboxing and Muay Thai, so I just sharpened a natural talent,” he said. “I grew up taking beatdowns, and I learned a lot from them, so since I was a kid I had this aspect of never surrendering. I keep calm under the storm because due to what I passed through in my life I know nothing worse can happen. If the guy hits me once, I want to hit him twice. That is my motivation.”

Breaking the seriousness of his aforementioned statements, Nunes then shows his funny side, recalling that the efforts to turn nightmares into dreams come from the Japanese Manga series (famous in its homeland and Brazil), Knights of the Zodiac. More precisely from all the suffering that lead character Pegasus Seiya went through in the majority of the episodes, only to shine in the end.

“My teammates laugh a lot when I say that, but I was a kid watching this cartoon where Seiya was getting wounded fighting against much larger and powerful enemies and that was impressive,” he says, smiling. “He kept going after them in spite of all the adversity and I have that going on in my fighting career too.”

Jumping back to the real world, his next fight is the UFC 131 bout against a no joke in “KenFlo.” Nunes knows the fight can be much more different and tougher than the UFC debut. Facing an original TUFer, and former middleweight, welterweight and lightweight competitor in Florian, the Brazilian considers his upcoming foe to be almost a mirror image of himself.

“I think Brown sticks to his game plan of takedowns and ground and pound, making the fight a little boring,” he says. “KenFlo has speed and likes to land kicks, working in and out until getting his opponents into his comfort zone. I see this fight being the greatest of UFC 131, no doubt.”

If all things are equal, Nunes sees a small advantage for him in this main card bout since he has been fighting as a 145-pounder since 2008, while Florian will taste life in the division for the first time ever.

“I know he’s a fighter with all kind of professionals helping him to get ready in a new weight class, but training is training and a fight is a fight,” he says. “I don’t see him getting 100% in a new division I have been in since 2008. I believe he’ll lose something – I don’t if it will be stamina or strength – but I see one small point of advantage for me.”

If Nunes beats the TUF 1 finalist, he’ll move into title contention, but it won’t be the way it is for most fighters, mainly because the man who holds the UFC belt in this division is his teammate and personal friend Jose Aldo.

“I always see what is next, not what can be after that. Now I’m focused on Florian and what I can do to beat him,” he said. “My objective is a belt, but I can’t let myself imagine, just for a hundredth of a second, where I can be after this fight. Aldo is a brother, a close friend and a worthy teammate and I can’t deny that we already talked about it with our coach and managers.”

And what was the verdict?

“Wait and trust,” Nunes says, smiling, but keeping the suspense. “For now, I have only one target, Florian. The rest comes after, and only after, will something come.”

The importance of the Gracie family in the history of mixed martial arts is undeniable. The growth of the sport here in Brazil, known first as Vale Tudo and then later as the modern MMA, motivated and enthused many. I have examples from my own life, as Carlos, George and Helio were the reasons why my grandfather traveled to witness their fights. My father followed the Gracie challenges in the 70’s and the decade of the 80’s was mine when Rickson began his bouts against much larger opponents.

Time has passed, and now we are seeing kids who turned into professional fighters exclusively because of the actions of Royce inside the Octagon. Around 1993, the year the UFC was created, young boys opened their stunned eyes when the slim Brazilian Jiu-jitsu practitioner submitted heavier guys coming from respected martial arts which were mainly striking disciplines.

Brazilian-born Vagner “Ceara” Rocha, who takes on Donald Cerrone in a lightweight showdown at UFC 131 this Saturday, is a perfect byproduct of this, despite the different directions his life took along the way.

The native of Nova Friburgo, a mountain region city in the state of Rio de Janeiro, lived there only until he was three years old. While he was a baby learning his first words, his parents moved to the United States looking for better life conditions. Only 13 years later, Rocha found what he would do for a living – become a martial artist – due to the impact of what he watched.

“I watched that show of the Gracie family (Royce) inside the UFC’s Octagon and I was curious to learn Brazilian Jiu-jitsu, with my sights on being a MMA athlete,” he says. “So I started training here in Florida with Pablo Popovitch.”

Still a teenager dazzled by his discovery, Rocha had to handle the difficulties of being a foreigner in a new land. Dealing with a new language and the distance of some family members became tougher when the boy started working to help his parents, who had jobs cleaning restaurants.

“While a kid I always liked fights, so as I became an adult I realized I was good at it,” Rocha said. “My parents always motivated me and supported me a lot. Since my first championship they were rooting for me.”

And the praise given by Rocha’s family turned into solid results, as the Pembroke Pines resident won awards in grappling and BJJ such as the ADCC North America Trials championship, a bronze medal in the Abu Dhabi World Pro (weight and absolute), multiple wins in NAGA and Grapplers Quest, a Pan Am championship (as a brown belt) and third place in the BJJ Worlds.

Yet though he was focused on becoming a mixed martial artist, with plenty of will and talent for fighting, Rocha, who graduated to black belt in 2007 by Popovich, only debuted in the sport 28 months ago. So what’s the explanation for that long delay?

“Arranging fights,” he replies. “I always wanted to compete in MMA; however, I didn’t have the connections for that to materialize. But I needed this experience to get better. So the idea (of debuting in MMA) got strong after I opened my school four years ago. Finally, I had the chance to train professionally.”

Every BJJ competitor has the initial difficulties adjusting his game to modern MMA, as a few moves simply don’t work without a gi, and Rocha was no different. But adapting his ground game seemed successful enough, as his first bout lasted just 42 seconds.

“I wasn’t nervous; anyway that wasn’t even the easiest fight of my career,” he says, but it’s hard to believe it wasn’t, as the fight was ended by rear naked choke and not a ‘lucky punch.’ “I really didn’t know what to expect for that fight, but I did well.”

After a good start, fighting two more times in 2009 and four times in 2010, including an international debut in Lima, Peru, Rocha compiled a 6-1 record, with only one win going the distance. In an ironic stroke of destiny, his second fight, the only one which went to a decision, was a victory over a member of the family which motivated him to become a fighter, as he beat Igor Gracie at Bellator 11.

“That was a really important fight for me, because I trained in the martial art which came from his family,” he says. “The show was big and I was facing him practically in his backyard.”

Reaching the UFC with only six victories in seven fights is no problem for the Brazilian, as his experience fighting twice for Bellator and once for Strikeforce molded the man. And it was mainly in the second promotion, where he faced the lone negative result of his career (against Bret Bergmark). And while we know that from defeats we become stronger, Rocha says that is not the case.

“I learned that you can’t fight without being 100%; your body needs to be good. I took the opportunity of fighting in Strikeforce with an infection and under fever, but I didn’t want to cancel because of the opportunity,” he said. “Participating in those shows gives me an idea of what I’ll face in the UFC, even though the UFC is unmatchable.”

The BJJ black belt is taking “Cowboy” Cerrone on short notice, with less than 30 days to prepare and though he agrees that the timing isn’t the best, he wasn’t about to back down from this opportunity.

“I got surprised with the call, but I’m very thankful for it,” he said. “I would never deny the chance to face Cerrone; I was training for another fight before I knew about this one and then I just increased the preparation pace.”

With titles in grappling and BJJ tournaments, and four subs and one stoppage among his six wins, we can expect a well-versed ground fighter trying to take Cerrone down. But with his training at Team Avengers, The Armory and with fellow countrymen known as feared strikers in Edson Barboza and Luiz “Banha” Cané, in addition to Team Popovich, Rocha expects to bring much more to the table than people may expect.

“I train on the feet with good coaches to sharpen this area,” he says about striking. “My strong point is the ground game, but I think I’m a good fighter in other aspects, some better than others. And of course I expect to explore what Cerrone provides me. We see that he doesn’t mind working from his back with an open guard, and I can take advantage of what I think is his weak point, the loose guard.”

Brazilian Jiu-jitsu brown belt Renan Barao is currently experiencing the same “dream come true” feelings every high level competitor wants to feel when debuting in the big leagues. But as he prepares for his UFC 130 bout against the first-ever WEC featherweight champion, Cole Escovedo, it’s almost as if his arrival in the Octagon was fate.

The 24-year old bantamweight product of Kimura/Nova União is a veteran of 29 fights, with 27 victories, 1 defeat and 1 NC, and despite being a bantamweight, the idea of being in the UFC was so strong that he was willing to risk everything to get there.

“When I signed my contract to fight WEC, I was so glad, because that was the recognition for a job well done,” Barao says. “But I can’t lie, the UFC was my target; I was thinking of a way to be part of the show, and even through the most I weighed in my fighting career was 149.9 pounds, I wanted to take a chance over there.”

Prior the migration of the 135 and 145-pound divisions from the WEC to UFC in late-2010, Barao’s options were few if you look at the lightweight division of the UFC and the monsters which inhabit it. Joining that division would be a guarantee that Barao would be outmuscled while losing one of the most exciting bantamweight abilities – speed.

Giving an opponent more advantages isn’t on the mind of any fighter, especially Barao, who already went through a similar situation in his debut, as he fought a much more experienced fighter while he was only 18 years old.

“I saw my teammates fighting MMA and I told my coach (Jair Lourenco), ‘That is what I want to do.’ The chance of fighting for the first time was amazing, however a mix of too much adrenaline, plus my opponent’s extra experience beat me and I nearly retired prematurely from MMA.”

The support of his teammates allowed Barao to abandon the idea of not fighting in MMA anymore, and he started his stellar unbeaten run, beating adversary after adversary and making a name for himself in the Northeast of Brazil. This region suffers from a prejudice where fighters from there are seen as having big hearts but small technique. Barao disagrees, saying the Northeast fighters have the same toughness and skill, but less publicity about their feats.

“I heard a bunch of times about that concerning fighters who come from the Northeast of the country. This is a wrong label, as I felt prepared to beat guys from Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo after the fights I did in my region,” he said. “We have less media coverage of our events, and because of that people think our resumes are fake. I was used to fighting with 30-60 days of rest and before my debut in WEC I fought two tournaments, dispatching two guys on the same night in each.”

The word ‘fake’ is miles away from Barao’s credibility in the MMA scene. The son of a boxing professor (Netinho Pegado), the kid was a brawler when he was younger, and his family wanted to focus his energy in a positive manner, and not on street fights. But he didn’t start in martial arts with his father; instead, the man who discovered the talented Natal native for MMA was the Rio Grande do Norte BJJ pioneer Jair Lourenco, and Barao is proud to consider himself a complete fighter due to the initial choices he made.

“I raised the Kimura/Nova Uniao flag and I started capturing BJJ medals as North/Northeast champion, 10-time State of Rio Grande do Norte champion and I placed third in the Pan Americans,” he says of his main gentle art conquests. “Training in Natal with my father and Lourenco and in Rio de Janeiro with coach Andre Pederneiras, Johnny Eduardo, Eduardo Dantas, Marlon Sandro, Jose Aldo, Diego Nunes, Leonardo Santos and many others forged me to be what people like to see, a complete fighter. I can strike, I can grapple, I can throw and I owe this complete game that I acquired to these great guys by my side.”

Facing a different opponent than his original one (Barao was scheduled to face ‘Mighty Mouse’ Demetrious Johnson, who now takes on former WEC bantamweight champ Miguel Angel Torres this weekend), the Natal native isn’t worried with the change. As he likes to say, everything is in God’s hands and it was Him who didn’t let Barao retire after a lackluster debut back in 2005 and provided him 27 victories in 29 fights afterward.

“I’m taking this change normally, the same way I’m taking my UFC debut. I can tell you I was 100 times more nervous when I fought at WEC 49 (June, 2010 – his international debut) than now, fighting inside the UFC. I believe a victory is a victory, and I need to accumulate them until get my title shot. Johnson is on a good winning streak, Escovedo is a former WEC champ, so either guy is a worthy match. I just let God dictate the pace of my destiny, and what he wants, it will be.”

Similar to his other countrymen when it comes to nicknames, Renan Pegado, aka Barao (in English, Baron), also emulates the same funny source of monikers like Toquinho, Cacareco and Tibau. So while we may think Barao comes from something related to the title of nobility from Pegado’s family, the fighter explains that his grandmother is the one responsible for the name.

“I’d like them to,” he says of people thinking he comes from nobility. “But it comes from the Brazilian soap opera ‘Sinha Moca.’ I was born after the big success of it on TV and there was a baron named ‘Barao de Araruna’ (laughs), so my grandmother told my mother, ‘Now Renan will be our Baron, and this nickname has been attached to me since then.”