IVC 2: The Birth of Wanderlei Silva

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.