Issue 127
April 2015
From Nova Uniao’s forgotten man to born-again middleweight title contender, Thales Leites explains the source of his UFC renaissance
As he paces around backstage at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, UFC middleweight Thales Leites is a nervous man. Not only does he have to deal with the incredible stress that comes with cutting weight, he also knows that he has to step into the Octagon against a man who will try to take his head off 24 hours later.
Most men would crumble at the insurmountable pressure that comes before a fight, in fact some have. However, whenever Leites’ heart starts to race uncontrollably or doubts begin to creep into his mind, all he needs to do is unfold a small piece of paper from his pocket to find the inspiration he needs to push through.
On that piece of crumpled up paper is a drawing from his five-year-old daughter, Valentina. She does one for him before every single fight. It’s this simple yet effective picture that reminds the 33-year-old what he’s fighting for every time he steps into the cage. It drives him towards success.
The reason the image has such a powerful effect on the Brazilian is because he’s fully aware of the struggles he’s had to endure to get back to the UFC. He dropped a controversial split decision to Alessio Sakara at UFC 101 on the back of a lackluster performance against Anderson Silva for the UFC middleweight title at UFC 97, which led his dismissal from the organization. Valentina was born a month before his bout with Sakara.
However, her birth and his release from the biggest promotion in the world didn’t scare him. In fact, he attests, it galvanized him. The setback motivated Leites to an impressive 6-1 record on the international circuit where he slowly but surely dragged himself back to the promotion he made his name as a top competitor in.
“After my daughter was born, everything was for her,” he says with a broad smile across his face while he sits and plays with her. “She makes me a stronger fighter and she roots for me every time I fight. When I’ve had my fight she likes to take pictures with me. She really is my partner.
“Whenever I have a fight I always ask her to do a drawing for me and I always take it with me for weight cutting. She really is a big motivation for me.”
“My other motivation is that I love my job. Being a professional fighter is amazing. Probably 1% of the working population get a chance to do a job they actually enjoy. I can work and eat doing what I love to do.”
After four years fighting for various promotions and recovering from a knee injury, Leites returned to the UFC in 2013 to little fanfare. However, since being re-signed he has started to make a lot of noise with his performances and built up steam in the 185lb division. He reached a crescendo with the brilliant back-and-forth scrap against Tim Boetsch on the UFC 183 main card.
He was badly rocked in the first round, but he submitted the American with an arm-triangle choke in round two, earning himself $100,000 in bonuses for ‘Fight of the Night’ and ‘Performance of the Night’ in the process.
It was nothing less than Leites expected. “I knew it was
going to be a tough fight against Boetsch. He’s a good fighter. Even when he’s losing the fight he’s still going forward so you know he’s game,” Leites tells Fighters Only.
“Stylistically, me and him were well matched to have a good fight. From the start, I was looking for the knockout or the submission and so was he. It was an intelligent, but explosive fight.”
This latest victory, plus wins over Tom Watson, Ed Herman, Trevor Smith and Francis Carmont, have catapulted Leites into the 10th spot in the UFC 185lb rankings.
Yet despite his delight at receiving the recognition he’s currently enjoying, Leites is keen to keep his feet firmly on the ground.
“It’s awesome for me to move up the UFC rankings so quickly. It’s all I want. I’ve worked incredibly hard to get there and I want to keep on fighting until I get into the top five and get a title shot again,” he says.
“However, that is away from me now and at the moment all of my focus is on whoever my next opponent is and facing him.”
He adds: “Some people asked me what I’m going to do after my fight, but I don’t think about after the fight. My focus is 100% on the fight and after that fight I’ll focus on the future, but before it I have to concentrate on who is in front of me.”
One of the biggest surprises to come from Leites’ return to the UFC is his newfound comfort and willingness to stand and trade strikes. Before then, he only had two TKO victories on his record – one by doctor stoppage and one by corner stoppage. He doubled that number in 2014 with crushing knockouts of Carmont and Smith with strikes. The BJJ black belt credits long-time coach Andre Pederneiras for his new belief.
“Pederneiras has seen my game and watches my training all the time. He would always tell me that I need to believe in my hands and that I have a good stand-up game. He would tell me that I need to be more confident and believe in myself,” reveals Leites, who was born in the Niteroi suburb of Rio de Janeiro.
“After my last fight, Pederneiras said,
‘I told you to believe in yourself and now you’re doing great.’ He’s important to me because he knows my game and he knows how I feel. He has an excellent view on his fighters.”
It’s taken Leites a long time to start using his striking to finish foes, but who could blame him when his elite jiu-jitsu base yielded so many chokes and armbars. Expect to see a lot more of that Muay Thai now though.
“Honestly, I’m not exactly sure why I haven’t been more confident in my hands,” he says. “Maybe it’s because my background is in jiu-jitsu. I think most of the guys who come from jiu-jitsu and come over to mixed martial arts would rather bring the fight to a more comfortable area.”
“In MMA, the fight starts with both fighters standing. You’ve got to try and make things happen in the standup rather than just constantly try and take the fight to the floor. Nowadays, everyone knows jiu-jitsu, especially guys from North America. It’s hard to take guys down and control them on the ground, so that’s why Andre told me to start believing in my hands.”
As one of the elder statesmen at Nova Uniao, Leites is surrounded by talented young fighters who have yet to make it into the larger MMA promotions. He finds solace in sharing wisdom with the younger Nova Uniao generation so they’re prepared for what happens when they follow in his footsteps and make it to the big leagues.
“There are a lot of good fighters at Nova Uniao already,” he says. “Not every good guy we have at the gym is in the UFC yet because they’re young, but they have a good future from what I can see.
“At the beginning, we used to represent one martial art and that was jiu-jitsu. We used to fight in the beginning and try and take each other down.
“Now our guys know striking and they know the ground game really well too. The confidence that comes from them is unbelievable.
“They don’t freak out when they are in trouble and that is amazing. What I try to do is talk to those guys in the beginning of their career and tell them to believe in themselves. I tell them if they believe in their game they can do whatever they think they can do.”
With many of the UFC middleweight division’s leading contenders facing off against one another in the coming weeks, Leites could soon find himself
in the second UFC title fight of his 11-year career.
And while he’s eager to redeem himself in the championship class eventually, he’s happy to make his way back to the belt one step at a time – with Valentina as his biggest cheerleader.
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