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A long night to be remembered as talents emerged and one of the most unique chapters of Brazilian MMA history was written! By Eduardo Alonso Through its tenth previous editions, never before Meca Vale Tudo meant so much for its participants, and never before so much pressure was laid on the shoulders of those fighting during the true MMA marathon ran in the cold city of Teresopolis, in the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Through more than five hours of fights, every single fighter that stepped inside the Meca ring had both their hopes and fears to control, as Pride's representatives Nobuyuki Sakakibara and Nobuhiko Takada were both on hand ringside. This is a rare thing even for Japanese shows, let alone a Brazilian one! With youngsters wanting to prove they are capable, and veterans trying to show they still have a lot left in their arsenal, every fighter had his reason to feel the pressure, so the question was which ones would emerge under this situation, and which would fall short in such an important outing. Well, in that cold night some were truly ready for the task and delivered in good fashion! One of them was new Gracie Barra Combat Team addition Gustavo "Ximu" Machado. Facing extremely tough Chute Boxe fighter Nilson de Castro, this fight was as important to one as it was to the other, since Nilson was coming of a series of losses, while Ximu suffered a KO win at KOTC and had a controversial win over Allan Goes at Heat FC 2. However, what was seen Through the three rounds of fighting was Gustavo controlling most of the action, surprisingly feeling comfortable in the stand up against a barely recognizable De Castro in terms of striking. During the whole fight Ximu was able to land endless kicks to Nilson's legs, as well as several uppercuts, getting the better of the stand up. As the fight progressed and the Chute Boxe fighter tried to be more aggressive, Ximu used takedowns and ground and pound to secure a very solid judges' decision win. This was the third fight of the night, following a good outing by Shooto veteran Luciano Azevedo, who had way superior stand up than Brazilian Top Team fighter Suyan Queiroz, what helped him to punish and tire Suyan out during the first rounds, to finally score a beautiful submission just like Rodrigo Minotauro did to Mark Coleman, in a triangle choke switching to armbar. The second fight of the night saw Spanish Anotonio Tello entering the fight under the Chute Boxe banner, but having no chance against Fabricio Monteiro who needed barely 30 seconds to knock him out with punches. Takada Dojo Japanese fighter Wataru Takahashi came in as a last minute addition to the card and impressed with a good performance under the circumstances. Although his opponent's quality was questionable, Wataru had some good single-leg takedowns, reminding his training partner Kazushi Sakuraba, and was very fast and agile, almost getting a good armbar in the first moves of the fight, to finally get a guillotine choke at around four minutes into the combat, sending Monteiro to sleep as he refused to tap. Like a hiatus between the interesting first fights and the great ones coming up, three un-special bouts followed with Alex Gaze winning by KO in the 3rd round against Andre Bispo, in a match-up that didn't please the crowd, former BTT fighter Luis Britto getting a forfeit win over Junior "Besouro" as Junior injured his should, like Sakuraba against Silva part two, early in the 2nd round, and Ivan "Batman" getting an impressively boring judges' decision win, lay and pray style, against WEF veteran Alexandre Barros. Thankfully for the audience the best was yet to come, and in a classic Chute Boxe versus Brazilian Top Team match up Milton Vieira and Jadyson Costa battled in an fast-paced fight where Milton emerged as truly a top fighter at his weight, showing an explosive game with decent stand up, good takedowns and an active ground and pound, where he kept hurting Jadyson's eye, and giving endless troubles for the Chute Boxe fighter to work with his guard. Finally Vieira completed his dominance with a katagatame choke much like the one Minotauro scored on the first round of the Pride GP sending Costa to dreamland as he also didn't tap. Fighting against local idol Delson "Pe de Chumbo", Chute Boxe warrior Jorge "Macaco" Patino tried to show his new trained stand up game but couldn't defend Delson's quick takedowns, much less escape his ground and pound control as all the three rounds went in the same way, much to the local crowd's delight, giving Delson an important Judges' decision win for his young career. The night was not all bad for Chute Boxe though, as the team's newest rising start, Daniel Acacio, once again showed dominance and aggressiveness in his quick work of Ruas Vale Tudo fighter Eric Tavares. Acacio ran over him with some ground and poud, footstomps and kicks in the ground and needed little more than one minute to get the KO. It seems that Japan will be his next stop, as he has been dominant in Brazil. As we saved the best for last, the fight between UFC veteran Tony de Souza and Meca stand out Luis Azeredo was worth of its own paragraph. Azeredo came in as the favorite in the fight as he has been more active than Souza and had been showing dominance in his fights. His stand up was also better, so apparently he would have the edge, considering the fight was in Brazil. Well, what Azeredo himself couldn't count was the amazing crowd phenom that happened in Teresopolis! As Tony de Souza entered the ring, with a huge beard and a simple, poor-looking, pair of shorts nobody was about to taking him seriously in the fight. Then, Luis Azeredo entered the ring as pure confidence, in what some could think of as arrogance, and as the fight started his confidence translated into some antics that didn't please the anti-Chute Boxe crowd. Adding this to Tony's simple and humble look, what followed was an absolutely wild support display from the crowd never seen before on an MMA show that I can recall! It was truly like a soccer game or something like it, as the Brazilian crowd started chanting "Mendigo" [A Portuguese word for beggar/bum] in all types of different chants, non-stop during the whole fight! This got to Azeredo's mind, and with De Souza being able to execute a perfect game plan, using his underrated Wrestling to take the fight to the ground as much as needed, and showing impressively slick Jiu-Jitsu to force the competitive Azeredo to spend much of the fight struggling to escape, as the Peruvian Tony would keep going to his back, attempting to get in position to submit him, and even mounted him once. The crowd went wild, and once the referee even stood the fighters up when the UFC veteran had a good submission attempt going on in what could've ended the fight. As the decision was rendered to Tony de Souza, he was raised on the shoulders of his corner, that included Vitor "Shaolin" Ribeiro and Andre Pederneiras, and the arena went berserk! It was kind of a unique moment in Brazilian MMA recent history, that will be remembered for long, as Meca Vale Tudo 11 was in the end a very entertaining show, that tested the resistance of those in the audience, but rewarded those who withstood it with some great battles. |
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