Author: Guilherme Cruz

Forget about Cowboys Stadium. Wanderlei Silva wants something bigger.

“The Axe Murderer” will coach the third season of The Ultimate Fighter Brazil next year, and his long-time rival Chael Sonnen will coach the opposite team. Silva wants a special venue to host the bout.

“I want this fight to take place at Maracana,” Silva said in a press release. “I want a crowd just like the 1950 World Cup final with 110,000 fans in there if possible. If they don’t sell out the place, I’ll buy all the tickets and hand them to the fans.”

Maracana was built in 1950 to host World Cup’s first trip to Brazil, and the Brazil was the heavy favorite to win the championship. However, they lost to Uruguay in front of more than 200,000 fans in the stadium, an episode referred to as the “Maracanazo”.

Silva expects a different ending to his rivalry with Sonnen at the stadium in Rio de Janeiro, and wants the fight to be contested in the light heavyweight division.

“I want him really strong, so he can survive more than a round against me,” he said. “I want this fight at 205 pounds.”

Following the UFC Fight Night 32 press-conference in Goiania, Brazil, UFC president Dana White told the media he would consider doing Wanderlei Silva vs. Chael Sonnen in a soccer stadium in Brazil with Vitor Belfort fighting for the middleweight championship against the winner of Chris Weidman vs. Anderson Silva 2 on the same night.

GOIANIA, Brazil — Sam Sicilia returned to Brazil one year after his first UFC trip to the country, and he finally returns home with a victory.

The TUF 15 veteran suffered a second-round TKO loss to TUF: Brazil winner Rony Jason in his featherweight debut in Rio de Janeiro’s UFC 153 on October 2012, and he returned to the win column at UFC Fight Night 32 in Goiania on Nov. 9.

Sicilia dominated Godofredo Pepey at UFN 32, stopping him with punches and elbows in the first round.

“Disrespect” was the key to earn his first victory in the featherweight division.

“I kind of went there and just disrespected his hands,” Sicilia said after the fight. “I went down at CM System to train with a bunch of jiu-jitsu guys that were very active in their guard, so when I went with him he seemed slow, so I could tee off on him and beat him up.”

To succeed in his second trip to Brazil, Sicilia decided to train in Brazil two weeks before the fight, and he got the help of fellow TUF 15 veteran Cristiano Marcello. Sicilia, who stopped Marcello at TUF 15 Finale on June 2012, credits his first UFC Brazil experience and the help of the MMA veteran for his performance on Nov. 9.

“I fought Rony, and Rony is better than Pepey, and I fought him in Rio, that is a tougher environment,” he said. “The first time I came here was tough and this time it wasn’t as bad. I got used to it, so that did help me out a lot.

“I just got early to Brazil to get used to the environment. They kind of boo you, but once the fight starts going they just cheer for a good fight. The point is, just put on a good fight and afterwards they get high fives and start cheering for you.”

In UFC president Dana White’s latest video vlog, check out behind the scenes footage from UFC Fight for the Troops 3 in Fort Campbell, Ky., and UFC Fight Night 32 in Goiania, Brazil.

Royce Gracie shocked the world at the first edition of the Ultimate Fighting Championship on Nov. 12, 1993.

UFC’s history, however, started over two decades before.

The Gracie family had established a respectful history in Brazil with Helio, Carlos and Carlson fights. It was time to expand their knowledge to another market, and Rorion Gracie decided to move to the United States.

As he already expected, it wasn’t that easy.

“I came to the U.S. for the first time in 1969 and but I got robbed, they took my flight tickets and money, so I had to stay here for a year,” Rorion Gracie told MMAFighting.com. “It was an interesting experience that made me more mature, and I made some good friendships here. I had to sleep in the streets, my bed was a pile of newspapers, but that experience made me grow a lot.”

Rorion Gracie eventually returned to Brazil and graduated from law school, but he couldn’t forget his plans to spread jiu-jitsu in the United States.

“When I got back to America, I put a jiu-jitsu mat in my garage and asked everybody to take a class with me, and everybody liked it,” he said. “I spent 10 years teaching jiu-jitsu in my garage. Most of my students said their karate, boxing or muay thai teachers said they were wasting time with jiu-jitsu, and I always invited the teachers to come train with me inside my garage. I beat them all, and some of them became my students in the end.

(Photo courtesy of Rorion Gracie)

“It all happened over and over again, a hundred times in ten years, but I realized I had to leave my garage if I wanted to introduce jiu-jitsu to the world, and I knew I would need the TV to do it. That’s when I had the idea to create a tournament where every martial art would fight to see which one is the best, and that’s where a skinny Royce Gracie started all this.”

The Gracie family had done those type of challenges in Brazil decades before, and it worked perfectly to make them famous — and feared — all over the country. Even the president of Brazil took jiu-jitsu classes and watched Helio Gracie’s fights live, but Rorion had to come up with something spectacular.

John Milius, writer and director of dozens of movies and TV series, was one of Rorion Gracie’s students at that time, and he helped him create the famous Octagon.

“The TV guys loved the idea,” he said. “It was unbelievably crazy, but they loved it. I used to teach John Milius and we started wondering how we could create a ring where the fighters couldn’t escape. I’ve seen a lot of fighters escape through the ropes when they’re getting beat. We came up with the idea to build a tank full of sharks or alligators around the ring, or maybe an electric fence. We considered everything, but in the end we came up with the idea of an octagon.”

(Photo courtesy of Rorion Gracie)

Helio Gracie, Rorion’s father, approved the project.

“Helio loved the idea,” he said. “I was alone in the U.S., working hard to build Gracie jiu-jitsu. I found out that we could do a fight with no gloves or rules in Colorado, so it all worked out. Everybody loved the idea and my dream became true.”

(Photo courtesy of Rorion Gracie)

The major issue inside the family at that time was “why Royce Gracie?” He was one of the most inexperienced fighters in the clan and clearly not the best option to put into an openweight “Vale Tudo” tournament.

“Why not?”, Rorion Gracie replies.

“Everybody told me to pick Rickson Gracie,” he said. “He would be a huge success, he would obviously beat all of them, but the reason why I picked Royce is because he’s a tiny, skinny guy, and that would prove that jiu-jitsu is a better martial art no matter who you’re fighting. If Rickson goes there and wins, big deal! He’s huge. It would be like a tank running over everybody. The idea was showing that even a small guy could beat a bigger opponent using jiu-jitsu.”

Only 2,800 fans went to the McNichols Sports Arena in Denver, Colorado, to watch UFC 1, but can still be considered a success.

“We made some money, yes,” Gracie said. “We expected to sell 40,000 pay-per-views with that first edition and sold 85,000. After that, we sold 120,000. It grew fast. By the second or third pay-per-view, Forbes called the UFC the most successful franchise in pay-per-view history.”

It was great, better than he expected. So, why did he sell his share of the company and leave? Blame Royce Gracie vs. Dan Severn.

“We had two hours to air the event in pay-per-view, and we had fights with no time limit or weight divisions, just two guys going in there to brawl and finish the opponent to win,” he said. “That was the idea when I created the UFC. But when Royce fought Dan Severn at UFC 4, the whole event lasted two hours and three minutes. The pay-per-view went off and nobody saw the end of the main event. We had to send them tapes of the fights, return their money… It was crazy.

“At UFC 5, my partners Art Davie and Bob Meyrowitz said we had to change the rules because of TV, so I realized that the TV had changed the philosophy of my tournament. I wanted real fights on TV. My partners wanted a TV show with fights. They were the pockets of the UFC at that time, and I disagreed with them, so I left. I sold my share of the company and left, and I don’t regret it. I wasn’t there to make money. I just wanted to show jiu-jitsu to the world.”

They lost tons of money with UFC 4 pay-per-view fiasco, but it turned out to be a great promotion for the brand after all.

“On the other hand, it was the biggest publicity we could get,” said. “We made ten times more money with the publicity. People went crazy about that fight, everybody wanted to see it but they couldn’t. Some people called me on the next day saying ‘Rorion, you’re a genius. Everybody wanted to see the fight and you turned that off.’ They thought I did that on purpose.”

Rorion Gracie hasn’t attended a UFC event since 1995, when Ken Shamrock fought Royce Gracie to a draw after 36 minutes at UFC 5. He doesn’t like to watch fights anymore, but he will make an exception on Nov. 16.

“I don’t watch the UFC anymore, but Dana White called me to go there on Nov. 16 and I’m going,” he said. “I said ‘of course, man, I want to congratulate you’. The fact that I don’t watch it doesn’t mean it’s not good. They have a lot of great fighters there. But my dream is complete. When they started training jiu-jitsu, my mission was accomplished.

“It’s the fastest growing spectacle in the world today. Dana White built a great entertaining program, but it just doesn’t have the same educational value that it had before. We had a competition between martial arts, and now we have a competition between athletes. Everybody learned jiu-jitsu as I planned when I came to America. Today, my goal is to help people change their lives with the Gracie Diet.”

Rony Jason’s week just keeps getting worse.

“Devastated” after a 40-second knockout loss to Jeremy Stephens at UFC Fight Night 32 in Goiania, Brazil, on Nov. 9, the first TUF: Brazil winner smashed a door with his elbow in the locker room and needed 15 stitches.

The Brazilian MMA Athletic Commission announced that Jason received a 180-day medical suspension following the bout Monday, but CABMMA’s CEO Giovanni Biscardi announced that the featherweight will receive an extra punishment Tuesday.

Due to his unsportsmanlike conduct in the locker room area after his fight, CABMMA announced “the suspension of the athlete Rony ‘Jason’ Mariano for a period of 30 days, counted as from the end of the period of his medical suspension,” said the release sent to MMAFighting.com.

With the pair of suspensions, Jason won’t be able to compete until June 9, 2014.

In the post-fight press conference, UFC president Dana White didn’t seem so upset with Jason’s behavior.

“This stuff happens,” White said. “Especially young guys. A devastating loss like that, you do stupid stuff sometimes. I don’t think he expected to slice his arm open and get hurt, but it happens.”

GOIANIA, Brazil — Thiago Tavares is back in the win column, and he wants a fresh start in the UFC.

Following a first-round submission victory over Justin Salas at UFC Fight Night 32 in Goiania, Brazil, Tavares asked to be part of UFC Fight Night event in Jaragua do Sul, Brazil, on Feb. 8, and that could be mark his debut as a featherweight.

“If the UFC approves it,” Tavares said after the fight, “I’ll be fighting at 145 in Jaragua do Sul.”

Tavares leaves the final decision on his drop to the featherweight division in Joe Silva and Dana White’s hands, as he feels he could still be a force in both divisions.

“Tonight, I’ve proved that I’m strong at 155,” he said. “But I believe I could be even stronger and more competitive at 145. I’m a UFC fighter and I’ll do anything they want, though. I have to work a lot to fight at 155, and I would easily make 145.”

Tavares’ perfect night at UFN 32, however, almost became a nightmare.

As he was warming up for the fight, the Brazilian suffered a cut when shooting for a takedown at teammate Nazareno Malegarie few moments before entering the cage, and Brazilian MMA Athletic Commission (CABMMA) almost decided to cancel the bout.

“The doctor wanted to cancel the fight, but we stopped the bleeding,” he said. “I cut my eyebrow 30 minutes before the fight, I couldn’t even warm up or I would start bleeding again, but tonight was my night to be reborn.”

When he finally entered the Octagon, he needed less than three minutes to finish Salas with a rear-naked choke.

“When I take my little friend to the ground, I know he’s in trouble,” he said. “I started in judo when I was 5 and in jiu-jitsu when I was 9, so I know I won as soon as I take my opponent to the ground. Sooner or later, I knew I would get the finish.”