Issue 005
July 2005
CAMPO GRANDE -RIO DE JANEIRO MAY 12TH
Rio Mixed Martial Arts Challenger, the new MMA event held in Rio de Janeiro’s has brought together some of the finest and well-matched new up and coming fighters, debuters and veterans to do battle in the same ring. And the result is nine fights with five decisions, one TKO, two submissions, and one brutal KO. There were special guest appearances by the big named fighters including Pedro Rizzo, Murilo ‘Ninja’ Rua, Ricardo Arona, Ebenezer ‘PitBull’ Fontes Braga, Hugo Duarte, Renato ‘Babalu’ Sobral, Gustavo ‘Ximu’ Machado, Leonardo Nogueira, Marcio ‘Pe-de-Pano’ Cruz, Eugenio Tadeu, Rogerio Minotoro, and Rodrigo Minotauro.
Two of the decisions were controversial; the first came early in the third fight when Eduardo Felipe and Erinaldo PitBull re-matched. The pair faced one another in the first (rainy) event, the Papucaia Fight MMA in 2004. PitBull won that contest with a majority decision. This time however Felipe won round one easily when he got PitBull’s back and spent nearly all the round working a choke and landing some punches. In round two Pitbull got the better of his opponent to level the score and exhaust Felipe.
PitBull had better opportunities in, the third. Both fighters fought a hell of match but didn’t have the stamina to keep the pace. A yellow card earned by PitBull, due to his corner intermission during the fight, was the deciding factor that gave the unanimous decision to Felipe. Before the next-to-last-match was a superheavyweight collission between Meca FC winner Mangueira and muay thai fighter Lucio Aguiar. Once again, a yellow card defined the winner, and this time it was the completely exhausted Mangueira who won the bout.
It wasn’t impossible to notice similar facts at the following fights. Both guys who lost (Johil and Capoeira) got to land very-nice high-kicks in their opponents’ face, respectively against Baixinho and Lango. The kicks weren’t enough to guarantee a victory, but it guaranteed good pictures for the photographers.
The outstanding fighter of the night was the Nova Uniao black-belt, Jose Aldo. A cold, aggressive and determined fighter who faced the warrior Aritano Barbosa in fight #2. R1 dominated by Aldo gave us with an impression that the fight wouldn’t go to a decision, and Aldo confirmed it when he gave Barbosa’s head soccer kicks three times at 1:02 of R2.
The semi-main event featured ZST veteran Aloisio Barros (in very good shape) facing off against up-and-comer Mauricio Reis, who took less than 24 hours notice to fight in this match. Aloisio imposed his highest experience to dominate Reis in the 3x5 rounds minutes. However, Reis had his moments of glory, on his feet with punches. Barros came across like the winner by decision, but he took the microphone to exalt Reis, who fought very well.
