First Blood: Vitor Belfort remembers slaying his first giant in MMA debut
Oct. 11, 1996 was a good night, and a strange night for 19-year-old Vitor Belfort. The teenager had long dreamed of becoming a professional athlete, and he'd traveled all the way from his native Brazil to Honolulu to make his pro MMA debut.
"I had a passion to become a professional athlete since I was a boy," Belfort told FOX Sports days before headlining an FS1 contest against Dan Henderson in Sao Paulo on Saturday.
"I started with soccer, I tried tennis. But then fighting came into my world and I knew I had to devote myself to this. I had the passion to become a world champion."
Belfort's scheduled fight that night would be his first step towards accomplishing those dreams. Still, visions of glory had to seem distant in the moment.
After all, Belfort was not set to fight in a shiny arena, for millions of viewers on television or for a good pay check as he will this Saturday. In fact, Belfort wasn't even really set to fight in the same sport as he does now.
These days, we have mixed martial arts (MMA), which is both an accurate and sanitized way of describing the beautiful combat sport. But in 1996, the term MMA didn't exist.
You could call the type of contest Vitor would fight in at that “Superbrawl 2” event vale tudo (Portuguese for "everything goes"), or you could call it NHB (no holds barred) fighting. In short, you could call it dangerous, and you could call it strange.
The loose and fast nature of the world of free fighting went beyond the ring. Business was done in a similar Wild West manner.
For example, though he flew across oceans to do it, Belfort says that he didn't have a written contract or bout agreement. He wasn't guaranteed any money, and he didn't quite know what rules, if any, would be in place.
"They wanted to pay me almost nothing. We had no contract. It was just a handshake deal," he remembers.
"So I told them, pay me $10,000 if I win, and nothing if I lose."
Belfort was booked to fight a giant -- 6-foot-7, 300-pound Jon Hess -- but first he would meet another, friendlier giant backstage.
"Shaquille O'Neal had just joined the Los Angeles Lakers, and during the fights the whole Lakers team was sitting in the front row watching," Belfort recounted with a chuckle.
"I didn't know much about basketball but everyone knows about the Lakers. Before the fight, they brought this tall guy into the locker room to meet me. It was Shaquille O'Neal."
The giant Belfort would end up meeting in the ring later that night was of the decidedly less friendly variety than the star NBA center. Hess, who had won his fighting debut in UFC in just 1:23 via nasty TKO, sent word that he wanted virtually no prohibitions in his fight with the much smaller Belfort.
"He wanted no rules," the black belt recalled.
"He wanted nut punches allowed, all these things. I put my hands over my nuts and said, 'I want to be a dad someday!' I had always thought of myself as a sportsman. I wanted to be a professional and I wanted fighting to be a sport."
Though Belfort may have initially balked at the ruthless parameters proposed for his fight, his coach Carlson Gracie Sr. stepped in as only he could. For years, Carlson was the champion of his fighting family -- defending their name and style against all-comers.
Even when clearly outmatched by size or age, Carlson always leapt eagerly into battle and, win or lose, always brought the fight to his opponents. The man also produced perhaps the single most accomplished lineage of Brazilian jiu-jitsu based fighters in the sport of MMA, which at this point includes not just the likes of Belfort, Murilo Bustamante, and the Nogueira brothers, but also fighters like Miguel Torres, Stephan Bonnar, BJ Penn and Jose Aldo.
The old warrior stepped up on Belfort's behalf and issued a war cry. "They wanted no rules and I remember Carlson told them, 'OK,'" he says.
"Carlson said, 'Tell him he can also go get a knife. He can go get a gun. We'll still fight him.'"
Your coach saying something like that either gives you confidence or makes you more afraid of disappointing him or her than you are of getting hurt by your opponent. The moment also set the tone for Belfort's career.
He would go on to fight at the highest levels in three weight classes, winning championships in two, and becoming the No. 1 contender in a third. Belfort would fight multiple men in a single night, fight on short notice and rarely step backwards in his near 20-year career or in any one fight.
"You cannot be afraid of dying," Belfort says of the lesson he learned long ago. "Usually, that's what causes injuries and death in a war zone. You've got to be willing to die."
It's an attitude that holds value for the father and husband far outside the cage, as well.
"Being a dad or a mom, you have to be willing to die (for your kids). You can't think about yourself. In marriage, you have devotion to one person. You stick with them for the rest of your life. If you cannot keep your word, you surrender to fear," he said.
"Fear can be found in any place, and fear is the opposite of faith. (The Bible) says to walk by faith, not by sight. What you believe is important. You cannot feed fear. God gives us not the spirit of fear, but the spirit of love, and of power, and of a sound mind. When you put fear ahead, you lose all three. With my son, I can't teach him to be afraid. I can't be afraid of how he may get hurt. I have to teach him that it's OK to fail, then pick him up and tell him to move again."
Belfort may for a moment sound as though he's off the topic of his first fight. Really, he isn't.
It takes something to chase a no-rules fight against a much larger opponent, for no money, and with the pressure of a famous team and expectations of one day becoming a champion. Vitor is revealing the stuff inside him that allowed him to go forward with that first fight, and it is the same inside stuff that has helped him in every fight afterwards, indeed in all struggles throughout his life.
He pauses for a moment in between quoting his beloved scripture. Clearly, he's taken aback thinking of that first walk from the locker room to the ring.
"Man," he says, suddenly slowing his speech.
"You've got me going back to that tunnel. Am I still here? Is that really me? I'm so thankful that I'm still healthy and in fighting condition. I look back at that fight, and it's still me, today. I'm able to be here today because I was always willing to take the hit. I was always willing to take the risk."
Vitor would take Hess out in just 12 seconds. To date, he's piled up 19 more such stoppage wins.
But back then, 19 years ago, Belfort could not know all that what would later come for him in his life and career. Right then, with a giant slain at his feet, and his arms raised for the first time after real battle, Belfort just enjoyed the euphoria of charging towards the dangerously unknown, and coming out victorious.
It is that feeling he'll be chasing once more Saturday night.
"It is unexplainable," he said. "If you never had the feeling, I don't know that I could ever explain it with words. But, you feel accomplished. It's joy. It's joy. That was the beginning, and I thought, 'I can't wait to do it again!' Then it happened again, and I had the same feeling -- 'Let's do it again.'"
