Vale Tudo Quotes

I'm a vale-tudo fighter.

I grew up watching 'Vale Tudo' and Marco Ruas. I fight imagining the bouts from a past generation, when everything was legal.

One of the guys I've always said was one of my favorite fighters to watch was Sakuraba. He's always been really creative. He's got a great attitude, and I think he has the right approach of just going in there and letting it all hang out.

My uncle used to fight Vale Tudo, and my mother even cornered him in some of his fights.

That was my dream since I was a kid, since I first saw a vale tudo event in my hometown of Sao Paulo. I wanted to compete.

Back then in the early '90s, people weren't calling it MMA - we called it Knockdown Sport Budo.

I had a two-hour VHS tape of Sakuraba and all his crazy stuff. He was doing crazy double flying chops with both hands and undressing the Gracie family one shoulder at a time, and probably my favorite fight of all time was when he fought in Heroes and was rocked and kind of out of it, and they stopped him and kind of shook him in bounds.

For me, Sakuraba was my favorite fighter when I first got into the sport.