When you ask most veteran mixed martial arts fans about the
identity of the first five Brazilians to compete in the
Ultimate Fighting Championship, most of them answer
Royce Gracie
,
Marco
Ruas,
Joe Moreira,
Amaury
Bitetti and
Vitor
Belfort. However, there were two Brazilians who stepped inside
the Octagon before Belfort:
Eldo Dias
Xavier (the capoeira stylist who got knocked out by
Marcus
Bossett in the UFC 4 tournament and today works as an Uber
drive in Minas Gerais) and
Rafael
Carino, who knocked out
Matt
Andersen in a UFC 9 prelim the same night that Bitetti was
beaten by
Don
Frye.
Unlike Xavier, Carino still contributes to the sport as a jiu-jitsu
trainer. Now 49, the sixth-degree black belt and two-time Brazilian
jiu-jitsu world champion remembers his one UFC appearance quite
vividly.
“I was a 21-year-old kid and had just received my brown belt,”
Carino told Sherdog.com. “When my coach
[Andre]
Pederneiras called me saying I was going to fight in the UFC, I
just couldn’t believe it. I thought he was playing some kind of
prank on me. The UFC was the place where heroes of my generation,
like Ruas and Royce, fought. It was like a dream and didn’t make
sense to me.”
In addition to the adrenaline associated with a packed Cobo Arena
in Detroit, where more than 10,000 people had gathered to witness
UFC 9, Carino was forced to deal with the most significant
consequence of the political pressures that had been levied by Sen.
John McCain. Due to McCain’s efforts, the UFC was obliged to
prohibit closed-hand punches the week of the event. With more than
250,000 pay-per-views already purchased, parent company Semaphore
Entertainment Group had no choice but to accept the “new rules”
suggested by the local commission. Referee John McCarthy entered
Carino’s dressing room and advised him that only open-hand punches
would be allowed.
“‘Big’ John said that for every closed-hand punch I landed I would
lose $50 and that I could be arrested after the fight if I didn’t
follow his directions,” Carino said. “However, I could see the
previous fights on a TV in the dressing room, and there was a lot
of blood in the Octagon. Everybody was punching, so Pederneiras,
with all of his experience, told me the opposite: ‘For every
closed-hand punch you land, I’ll give you $50. Thank God I decided
to listen to him.”
Carino admits he will never forget the crowd chanting “USA! USA!”
before the fight, followed by the absolute silence five minutes
later when a sequence of punches from the mount buried Andersen and
resulted in the Brazilian newcomer being declared the winner by
technical knockout. Bitteti’s TKO loss to Frye in the co-main event
led to even more recognition for the young
Nova Uniao star.
“Amaury was one of the biggest heroes in the Brazilian jiu-jitsu
community. He was one of mine, too,” Carino said. “Guys like Royce,
Rickson [Gracie], Ruas and Amaury were on the covers of Tatame and
GracieMag [magazines]. For me, it was a future dream, but when
Bitetti lost, I ended up being on the cover of Tatame—the most
important Brazilian martial arts magazine—at only 23 years old. I
traveled there totally unknown and returned a UFC winner. It was
just unbelievable.”
Newfound fame ultimately brought misfortune to Carino.
“I totally disappeared from the academy and started using
marijuana, which was really terrible for my MMA career,” he said.
“Later on, I won many jiu-jitsu competitions in the gi, but
Pederneiras always said I could have done much more—mainly in the
Pride [Fighting Championships] era.”
Today, Carino uses his own experiences to reach out to others.
“I teach private classes, group classes, but I also have a project
where I use jiu-jitsu to help addicted people and also a couple of
social projects in the slums,” he said. “I learned from Pederneiras
that jiu-jitsu is a great tool to give opportunities to the ones
who don’t have them.”
When considering the importance of Pederneiras’ job in relation to
assisting the less fortunate, the discussion invariably turns to
Jose
Aldo. The former
World Extreme Cagefighting and UFC champion arrived at Nova
Uniao in 2002 with the dream of becoming a professional
fighter.
“Pederneiras allowed him to sleep in the dojo, but chose me and two
other brown belts to take care of his food,” Carino said. “Each
day, one of us was in charge, and if we forgot, Aldo simply
wouldn’t eat that day. It was a lot of responsibility.”
Aldo retired from mixed martial arts in September and did so as one
of the most accomplished and revered competitors of all-time. He
will be inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame this summer.
“I saw how hard this guy worked every single day,” Carino said.
“Aldo deserves everything he got. I’m really proud of being part of
that history and, most of all, to be a Pederneiras graduate. It’s
impossible to say how many poor people he has helped. One of them
reached the hall of fame, and others, like
Marlon
Sandro,
Eduardo
Dantas and
Marcos
Galvao, captured world titles. However, there were thousands of
others who didn’t reach the highest levels, and he never stopped
helping them. Pederneiras is a unique person and a big example to
everyone around him.”