Ricardo Libório and the Meaning of Greatness

Ricardo Libório imparting his knowledge

There are names that are spoken of in hushed tones in gyms where men and women learn what it means to not give up. Brazilian jiu jitsu has its heroes; athletes who ascend to the pinnacle of the competition circuit or transition successfully into mixed martial arts. Their names are invoked in casual conversation when discussing how to set up a new technique or execute a match-ending submission. 

But there is a still higher pantheon of jiu jitsu masters. Their feats are near mythical and their abilities merge with their personas to cast a larger than life shadow across the whole of the sport. American Top Team founder Ricardo Libório is such a man.

Libório began his jiu jitsu career under the tutelage of the great Carlson Gracie, son of the founder of Gracie jiu jitsu. Due to his childhood background in judo and his facility for grasping techniques quickly, Libório became one of Carlson’s prize students. His reputation quickly spread as one of Carlson’s fiercest competitors in all of Brazil. Very early in his career, Libório was talked about by his trainer and many of his peers as possibly the greatest of his generation.  At the inaugural Brazilian jiu jitsu World Championships in 1996, Libório entered two weight classes above his usual division and dismantled the competition. He captured a gold medal in the 100 kg weight class, closed out the open weight division with his teammate Amaury Bitteti and was voted most technical competitor.

As Carlson's focus shifted increasingly to MMA in the mid-90s, Libório became one of the main instructors at the academy. He continued his competition success at the World Submission Wrestling Championships hosted by the Abu Dhabi Combat Club, taking third place in 1999 and second in 2000. The legend of his otherworldly skills only grew during this period as Libório would disappear from the academy for weeks or months at a time due to a full time job at a Brazilian bank. According to lore, he would come in on lunch breaks, change his clothes and tear through some of the toughest fighters in the world in minutes before re-robing and heading back to the office.

Following a schism with his trainer, Libório went on to found the Rio Jiu Jitsu Club and then later the Brazilian Top Team (BTT) with his old teammates. He became the primary jiu jitsu instructor at BTT, developing the grappling game of their MMA fighters while helping coach jiu jitsu competitors such as Fernando Margarida Pontes and Ricardo Arona to World Championships.

In 2002, Libório decided to pursue new opportunities in the United States, opening the American Top Team (ATT) with Dan Lambert and Marcus and Marcelo Silveira in Coconut Creek, Florida. Immediately upon arriving, Libório set about infusing the academy with his character of openness and always being willing to lend a hand to someone in need. Fighters dropping into ATT to train with the fabled master were shocked to meet such an affable gentleman capable of making them feel so helpless in training. His merciless pressure and technical precision on the mat became part of modern jiu jitsu folklore as high level competitors left training sessions doubting everything they ever knew about the art.

Not content to keep his knowledge bottled up, ATT expanded and Libório began spreading jiu jitsu and mixed martial arts knowledge through his students’ academies. Over the years, Libório has trained a who’s who of mixed martial arts champions, including UFC Welterweight Champion Robbie Lawler, Bellator Champions Will Brooks, Douglas Lima, Daniel Straus and Hector Lombard, WEC Champion Mike Brown, Sengoku Champion Jorge Santiago and WSOF Champion Jessica Aguilar. He has also trained grappling and jiu jitsu world champions such as Jeff Monson and Marcelo Garcia. In 2009, he was named the head coach of FILA’s US Grappling team where he successfully led the team to a gold medal in gi competition at the World Championships.

Shortly after the birth of his daughter Bella, jiu jitsu would come to take on a whole new meaning for Libório. When she was just a toddler, Bella was diagnosed with a cranial ailment that caused her to lose her eyesight. Following a harrowing ordeal of surgeries and rehabilitation, her father turned to the art that had defined his life to give his daughter an extra set of tools to interact with the world around her. Drawing on a mastery of the art few on earth have attained, Libório devised a methodology for teaching Bella jiu jitsu, focusing on vivid verbal descriptions and the close contact that characterizes the sport. After realizing success, Libório did what he’s always done: spread his knowledge to as many people as he could. He has since pioneered a special jiu jitsu program for blind children and made ATT one of the largest gyms in the US to cater specifically to paralympic combat athletes.

In the often ego driven world of fight sports, it can be a challenge to find someone who balances near superhuman abilities to impose their will with unrelenting generosity and kindness of spirit. Competitive or commercial success can draw anyone down the path of believing their own hype and becoming unapproachable and withdrawn. But those who have met him will testify that the mythical status Ricardo Libório enjoys is tempered by the fact that he is so adept at simply being a man.

The Ever-Evolving Vitor Belfort

Vitor Belfort has had perhaps the most significant evolution of any fighter or athlete period who's stuck around their sport for as long as he has. It's been fun to watch him add tools to his game. In fact, I would argue no championship caliber fighter in the history of MMA has transformed their game as radically as Vitor Belfort has over the course of his career. The only one who comes close is Anderson Silva, who totally reinvented himself upon his arrival in the UFC. It was weird to see the old Anderson return, with shoulders held high and a careful plodding style, in the fight against Nick Diaz. The samba was gone from his hips. Randy Couture also added tools to his game at a certain point in his career that made him more dangerous, but only as a means of setting up his bread and butter dirty boxing and clinch game. Vitor, owing perhaps to his youth when he entered the game, has been a master of technical and strategic reinvention.

Vitor started as a BJJer under the legendary Carlson Gracie, then grafted boxing skills onto his BJJ courtesy of trainer Al Stankie. He wasn't a very good boxer in the beginning, but had very fast powerful hands and seemed to have laser sharp accuracy. These skills allowed him to quickly defeat his opponents in the UFC 12 Heavyweight tournament where he burst on the scene. His fight with Randy Couture at UFC 15 showed how far he had to go in developing his boxing skills and his wrestling and clinch work was pretty unremarkable as well. Way back when, I interviewed Randy and he told me the key to beating Vitor was that he had a "click" where he would move backwards and then he would sort of pause and that's when you knew the flurry was coming. As long as you jabbed him on the click, you could beat him. Randy's boxing coach figured this out in 1997, having only seen a little of Vitor in action, but he said he used the same strategy when they fought years later in their third fight.

Belfort finishing Joe Charles at UFC Japan

At UFC Japan, we finally got to really see Vitor's BJJ skills when he dismantled Joe Charles. People ridicule that fight, but the "ghetto man" had at least been around against some names (albeit in a mostly uninspiring career). That Vitor contested it exclusively on the ground was a testament to his confidence.

After an unimpressive loss to Kazushi Sakuraba, we saw a Vitor who started to take his wrestling more seriously in his matches with Gilbert Yvel and Daijiro Matsui. Darryl Gholar was training with some of Carlson's guys at the time and would follow them to the formation of Brazilian Top Team. The difference in that Vitor was noticeable as he played a safer, more patient game, working his takedowns and learning to use his hands for ground and pound rather than just mad dash flurries. The fights were incredibly boring, but it was clear he was maturing.

Funny aside: I bumped into Vitor just by chance on the street in San Diego right after the Yvel fight. It was weird to me at the time how young he was because he seemed older on screen. He told me to go around the corner to Rodrigo Medeiros' academy where they were all watching the fight. He's like "Hey, I just fought in Japan. It was really great. The fight was really great. You should check it out." I was like "awesome!" So I go to the gym with these people all huddled around the screen and suffered through like half an hour of Vitor throwing potshots in Yvel's guard. Vitor comes in with a big smile and gives me a thumbs up so I didn't dare leave.

Belfort facing off against teammate Ricardo Arona at ADCC 2001

Vitor's BJJ was high at the time from working at BTT and his wrestling had really come along. He showed it off to good effect at ADCC 2001, taking 3rd in the absolute (though how legitimate his match with BTT teammate Ricardo Arona was can be left up to the imagination). His BJJ was the difference maker in his fights against Bobby Southworth and Heath Herring. He seemed to rob Herring of a win in a highly questionable decision, but there were a few times he was in trouble that his BJJ made the difference.

By the time he faced Chuck Liddell at UFC 37.5 we saw a transitional Vitor who had finally learned how to box a little bit and was even kickboxing. To me, the Vitor that showed up to fight Liddell was the beginning of the modern Vitor. He still hadn't shaken the click, but he was picking his shots better, using footwork and attempting to incorporate low and high kicks into his game. In the fight with Marvin Eastman a year later (a decidedly lesser opponent) he was able to really show the benefits of the muay thai training he'd been doing, unleashing brutal knees on Eastman and opening up one of the worst cuts in MMA history. Vitor was finally learning to put it all together.

Vitor and wife Joanna Prado holding photos of Priscilla Belfort

It was around this time that Vitor's sister Priscilla Belfort disappeared, a victim of an apparent kidnapping. Vitor soldiered on and fought Randy Couture anyway and landed that one in a million seam of the glove shot that won him the light heavyweight title. It would've been interesting to see how that fight would have looked if it had continued considering where Vitor was in his training. Belfort's timing and patience had changed tremendously by then. Sadly, by the time he and Couture rematched, his sister's death was a certainty, so who can know how much of a role it played in his training and disappointing in cage performance. The click was allowing Couture to get his set ups and Vitor just couldn't handle Randy's clinch game or superior wrestling. Vitor would have similar troubles in his fight with Tito Ortiz, despite a creditable effort, and the fighter who was submitted by Alistair Overeem in Pride seemed like a ghost of his former self.

Vitor waded through a few fights over the following years, winning some, losing some, but he often seemed either ill prepared or non-committal. At a certain point he started training his BJJ with Checkmat and he started experimenting with integrating some new tricks against lesser competition. His fight with James Zikic is especially interesting to watch because of how methodical he was, but he really put an MMA clinic on Zikic who gave him all he had. It's actually one of Vitor's best performances as a complete fighter. He used beautiful set ups to get the fight to the ground and was moving between hand and foot attacks well. His BJJ looked phenomenal.

A more patient version of flurry Vitor returned for the fights with Terry Martin, Matt Lindland and Rich Franklin, but was derailed by Anderson Silva's mighty front kick. Vitor was a true veteran in every sense of the word by the time he fought Anthony Johnson. AJ managed to put him in trouble, but Vitor's scrambles on the ground were still legit and he weathered a few storms to find the submission. It was clear he was slowing down a bit, but he had become a cagey, crafty vet. His short notice fight with Jon Jones proved this as well as he hung around with the champ for four rounds and even managed to be the first person to ever put him in any danger with a slick, tight armbar.

Belfort locking in an armbar on UFC LHW Champion Jon Jones

Back at 185 lbs. following those fights and with the aid of TRT, Vitor dispatched Bisping, Rockhold and Henderson using a completely well rounded attacking game, mixing excellent spacing, timing and footwork with varied leg and hand attacks. No one who saw any version of Vitor would have ever predicted that he'd become a head kick KO artist. But he did, rounding out an impressive growth as a fighter and truly showing the blueprint for how to evolve with the game.

Sadly, I think it's possibly too late at this point as his age, combined with changes to his supplement regimen, will make his endurance a question mark against a Chris Weidman who really knows how to put pressure on his opponents (an area where Vitor struggles) and has learned in just a few years what it took Vitor about eighteen to master. Still, I'm sure he'll have a few good moments in their fight. Vitor's not quite as quick as he used to be, but unlike other fighters who let the loss of speed completely disintegrate their game (Roy Jones Jr. perhaps being the best example), Vitor has adapted his skills to stay relevant in a sport where most of his peers have hung up the gloves. No matter what happens at UFC 187, it's been a fun career.