Issue 189

April 2020

Gilbert and Herbert Burns are out to prove that they are the baddest brothers in MMA history. Now together in the UFC, expect double trouble from them in 2020.

The Diazs, Millers, and Nogueiras are just a few of the sibling duos that have been wreaking havoc up and down the UFC roster over the years, but the strongest-ever sibling pairing may have only just come to the fore.

Gilbert and Herbert Burns are arguably in the prime of their careers and after spending time away from one another fighting on different continents they are now both under the UFC banner.

Gilbert, 33, is the older of the two and has been a respected member of the UFC roster since he made his debut back in July 2014. With a record of 17-3 and wins over the likes of Alex Oliveira, Olivier Aubin-Mercier, and Gunnar Nelson, Gilbert has long been considered one of the greatest grapplers in the UFC and a dangerous opponent at lightweight and now welterweight.

Younger brother Herbert, 32, spent the first four years of his career in Singapore fighting in ONE Championship as well as training and coaching at Evolve Fight Team. Herbert quickly put together a five-fight win streak, but fell out of favor with the promotion and ended his contract there with two losses in 2017. Despite this, in 2018 Herbert reconnected with his brother in America and after two wins in Titan FC he was offered an opportunity to compete on Dana White’s Tuesday Night Contender Series where he won himself a UFC contract.

With Herbert scoring a win on his full UFC debut in January earlier this year, the Burns brothers joined an elite list of siblings who have both competed and had their hands raised inside the UFC Octagon. It was a proud moment for both of them as Gilbert watched on from Herbert’s corner as he secured a devastating knockout victory and after over 20 years of hard work, both have now proven they can compete at the highest level. 

Though fans may only have seen their fights in the UFC, speaking recently to Fighters Only both brothers described how fighting was in their blood from an early age. For them, like so many other professional fighters, their journey began on the streets when they were just kids.

“We used to play fight all the time,” Gilbert said laughing. “Our mother says now that she knows why we were fighting all the time; it was because we were already training and getting ready to be fighters. We used to have so much energy. We would fight at home and fight on the street. There were so many kids playing back on the streets and we got in so many fights. It wasn’t anything crazy, but we were just normal kids getting into a lot of little confrontations. It was just a way of life.”

Gilbert and Herbet’s first taste of martial arts came when they were just six and seven years old. Given their fighting styles now, you would assume they would’ve started out with jiu-jitsu, but as young kids, it was a striking-based martial art where they first dipped their toes.

“We had a huge backyard when we were kids and a karate professor came to our house and told my Dad he needed a place to teach,” Gilbert explained. “He rented some space from us and his classes became really popular very quickly. My brothers and I all took the classes and we all competed a lot when we were small. We competed in that for three or four years, but our coach moved to a different state so we ended up not doing it any longer. For maybe two years after that, we started doing what all the other kids would do which was just play football in the street.”

The brothers’ route back into martial arts was entirely opportunistic. When Gilbert was 12 and Herbert 11, their father struck a deal with a customer of his auto-shop upholsterer and from that moment onwards they never looked back. The episode began with them discovering a piece of martial arts equipment that would later become a central part of their lives.

“In 1998 we started doing jiu-jitsu and it’s a funny story how it began,” Gilbert said. “My Dad worked from home and used to fix car interiors. One day a client came around and we found his gi in the car. Herbert and I just started playing around with it and I think our Dad just saw an opportunity with the client and asked him if he could trade his service for some lessons for us.

“The professor accepted, so my two brothers and I started there for free for three months. After that, our Dad had no money to pay for us so he told us we had to be at the top of the class so the professor would allow us to continue. It drove us on even harder and we obviously did well because he gave us scholarships. Not long after that we started competing.”

Unsurprisingly the competitive nature between the two brothers has always been fierce. Though both Gilbert and Herbert were both fast learners on the mat, both agree that one of them was a more natural martial artist.

“I think I’ve always been the more natural out of the two of us,” Herbert said. “Gilbert is still incredible compared to everyone else, but I think I’m the more technical and learn the techniques faster. I think I just learn really quick. Our training was really competitive. People used to say it was like a world war when we were on the mats.”

Gilbert and Herbert were flourishing in jiu-jitsu during their early teens but it was at this time that their training situation changed. Thankfully, their jiu-jitsu instructor recognized their potential and made a key introduction.

“We did a lot of small tournaments but our coach changed careers and became a politician,” Gilbert said. “One of the things I’m most thankful for in life is that he took us to a different team and told them that they should take us on with scholarships so we could continue to train. That place was called Oriente Jiu-Jitsu and they had close ties with Nova Uniao and Andre Pederneiras.

“We eventually started going three times a week even though it was an hour and a half to travel there and back,” Herbert continued. “It was there that we met the likes of Junior dos Santos, Jose Aldo, Renan Barao, and a lot of fighters. We were like 13 or 14 and we saw all the high-level black belts and fighters. I remember it just put a fire in me and from that moment onwards I knew I wanted to be a fighter.”

Up until this point, Gilbert and Herbert’s older brother Frederick had all the while trained alongside them in both karate and jiu-jitsu. Unfortunately for Frederick, the Burns’ family circumstances ultimately led him down a different career path and not into combat sports like his younger siblings.

“Frederick was the one who was training the most out of all of us,” Gilbert said. “No one truly understands how much potential he had. He’s more physical then I am and has a lot of power and explosiveness. He’s also more technical than Herbert. He was just a different level and when Nova Unaio started doing MMA he was the number one sparring partner for everybody.

“When he turned 18, we still had a very rough situation back home and we had no money,” he continued. “Both our parents were working super hard but it just wasn’t enough to support our whole family so my dad put a lot of pressure on him to go to military school and he went. When he started that he couldn’t train as much. He kept training a little, but not full-time. When Herbert and I saw this we felt like we needed to train harder. Today he’s a Navy SEAL in Brazil. It’s super hard and only the elite of the elite make it through the program. We’re so proud of him.”

Given both Gilbert and now Herbert’s standing in the UFC, it’s crazy to think that the most talented Burns brother never made it into the Octagon. Though both younger brothers are immensely proud of Frederick and his accomplishments in the navy, they can’t help themselves but think what might have been if he’d been able to fulfill his talents as a martial artist.

“He was always the most talented out of all of us and he’s still a badass,” Gilbert said. “He’s black belt jiu-jitsu, brown belt judo, and just on a different level. Even now on the BJJ scene, he’s still now a world BJJ champion. My brother has fought the best and beaten them. He was such a natural.

“I remember this one time when he visited home from military school, he got into a brawl in a club with the security. He beat up like ten security guards. It was so crazy. He literally knocked them all out and the police had to come. I remember just thinking to myself ‘Wow this guy can really fight.’ The UFC middleweight division is safe because he became a navy SEAL. He would be dominating in the UFC, 100 percent.”

Gilbert and Herbert’s took similar paths in MMA up until Herbert moved to Singapore to join Evolve. After making a great start to his career and putting together five straight wins to put himself in title contention, Herbert decided to leave his role as a coach at Evolve and he quickly found himself out of favor with the ONE brass. It was a low point in his career, but thankfully Gilbert was on hand to help him through his difficulties.

“It was such a frustrating time in my career,” Herbert said. “I felt like I was being punished for doing nothing wrong. At the end of my time there I wasn’t fighting to the best of my ability and after that, it was just so hard getting the right deal. Coming back to America was hard but thankfully Gilbert was the one who was the bridge between me and Titan FC. He kind of managed me for a bit and spoke to Lex at Titan and got me the right deal. He also sorted everything out for me to come to America. Gilbert helped me and everything here I have to thank him for it.”

Looking out for his brother was a no-brainer for Gilbert, but it wasn’t all about getting Herbert’s career back on track. Ensuring his brother had somewhere to live was paramount and he knew the best place would be in the US. 

“I always try to look out for my brothers, but not just Herbert and Fred,” Gilbert said. “They are number one for sure, but yeah I try to be a great teammate and I always try to do my best by the younger people on our team. I have just been there before and I think I should use my experience to help them out.

“When I saw it wasn’t working out for him in ONE and he went back to Brazil, I did a lot of hard work to get him over to America, get him the right visa, get him into the gym, and basically just setting him up here. I didn’t just make sure he got the right fights, I wanted to look after him and make sure he had a good quality of life. It’s easy to get him fights, but harder to make sure he’s actually doing OK. Everything after that was all him. He earned everything he has now.”

After settling back down in America, Herbert took two fights in Titan FC and won both by submission. With his record at 7-2, Herbert then defeated Darrick Minner to earn his UFC contract on Dana White’s Tuesday Night Contender Series and then went on to make his full UFC debut at UFC on ESPN+ 24 in January. It’s a night that will long live in the memory of both brothers, but for Gilbert, it was a nerve-wracking experience to say the least.

“Man, God I got so nervous watching him fight that night I was nearly sick,” Gilbert said. “Seriously, it’s so hard controlling my nerves. I try to control it and show him that I’m super confident, but I’m always so nervous. His debut in the UFC was the worst it’s ever been.”

Despite Gilbert’s nerves, on the night Herbert produced the performance of a lifetime. Both Herbert and his opponent Nate Landwehr came out swinging for the fences, but it was Herbert who landed a beautiful knee from the clinch to get his first knockout victory.

“Honestly I couldn’t have asked for a better debut,” Herbert said. “To win my first fight by knockout and see it go viral was amazing. It wasn’t bad at all for a jiu-jitsu guy huh?

“I’ve been working on my striking for a long time. I worked with a lot of Muay Thai champions when I was out in Singapore and more recently, I’ve been working with Henri Hooft at Sanford MMA. My style has always been aggressive so to be able to show people what I can do in my first fight in the UFC was everything I could’ve asked for.”

Herbert’s UFC career has only just started, but Gilbert already has 13 UFC fights under his belt and is currently riding a four-fight win streak that stretches back to December 2018. Gilbert sees his last loss to Dan Hooker at UFC 226 as a massive turning point in his career and he says he made two pivotal changes to get himself back on track.

“I’ve had three losses in the UFC and I learned so much after them,” Gilbert said. “I think I became so focused on making my striking better that I left my grappling on the side and that was my main weapon. I don’t think I gave my jiu-jitsu enough focus and after that loss to Dan Hooker, I realized I needed to change that. I started to do a lot more grappling tournaments after that fight to keep my tools sharp.

“The other big thing I changed was going to welterweight,” he continued. “Cutting to lightweight was just way too much and my body couldn’t take it anymore. Even things like training are so much easier at 170 and I accepted my first fight there on just two weeks’ notice.”

Gilbert’s move to welterweight in August 2019 began with the stiffest of tasks when he was offered a short-notice fight. It was a decision that he didn’t take lightly given the nature of the opponent, but it was a gamble that paid huge dividends.

“Nobody will understand what a hard moment that was,” Gilbert said. “They gave me a call and said they wanted me to fight an undefeated, 20-0 Russian in my first fight at welterweight. Most people would’ve said ‘No way,’ but that’s not my mentality. I was grappling so much at the time I felt so good so I took the fight. It was crazy hard getting ready for it in one week, but by the time I flew to Uruguay, I felt great.

“When I won that fight, I realized I could fight way more often at that weight,” he continued. “I then took another short-notice fight against Gunnar and won that too. Then I just started calling everyone out. I just wanted to fight. I think I may have annoyed Dana White and Sean Shelby and my manager Ali [Abdelaziz] so they told me to calm down for a bit. Deep down inside I think they like it though. I think they like that a lot better than the guys who just say no when they are offered fights.”

With Gilbert now booked to fight fellow Brazilian Demian Maia in a dream fight for grappling fans and Herbert coming off the back of a highlight-reel knockout victory, it’s fair to say that the future is looking bright for the Burns brothers.

Whether they go on to have the same level of success as the likes of the Diazs, Millers, Limas, ‘Freire, Nogueiras or even the Shevchenko sisters remains to be seen, but if you ask them, they will tell you that they are the toughest siblings there have ever been. 

“The baddest brothers are the Burns brothers,” Gilbert said laughing. “We would beat these guys no problem. You can put anyone up against us, but my brother and I would take everyone’s neck for sure.”

“The Burns brother definitely win man, come on,” Herbert added, also laughing. “The Lima brothers are a bit heavier than me, but that doesn’t matter. 

“We are just the most complete package,” he continued. “We speak English, we speak Portuguese. We strike, we grapple. We take anyone on, but we don’t trash talk. I think this is the best mix. The Burns brothers are going to make a big impact on the MMA scene in 2020. Count on that.”