Andre Pederneiras steps down as head of Nova Uniao

Andre ‘Dede’ Pederneiras is one of the greatest figures in the history of mixed martial arts and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. The Team Nova Uniao founder opened up Jiu-Jitsu to international students at a time when doing so was thought traitorous; BJ Penn and John Lewis got their black belts that way. And he opened up BJJ to poor Brazilians, when it was largely an upper-class past time. And he brought Dutch kickboxing into MMA in a major way, creating world champions like Renan Barao and Jose Aldo.

Now in an interview with Ana Hissa and Raphael Marinho for Combate, Pederneiras announced that after 21 years, he will no longer be the head MMA coach for Nova Uniao. He had previously stepped down as head BJJ coach, to focus on MMA. Now he will focus on his Upper Arena facility.

“I’m still here in training, giving the same advice to my athletes, but if for example, Urijah Faber comes here, I’ll give him the same training regardless of whether he represents Nova União or not,” said ‘Dede’. “If the people who are training at that time feel uncomfortable, I pick up and combine another schedule with him, a separate workout. Here I intend to meet every type of athlete, to get him to have all the training support. A jiu-jitsu athlete, for example, who is from another team and wants to do technical training here.”

“I try to show them that I think everything I’ve done right from the start is working. It may seem crazy, like 15 years ago, when I left the jiu-jitsu team to play MMA. I ended up riding one of the biggest teams out there. My daily life becomes more and more troubled by the social mission, so it will be difficult to see myself in the athletes’ corners. I can go all year [cornering] and next year at none, it will depend a lot on the situation. The old generation of the academy will be more on top of that, Leo Santos, Thales Leites, Hacran Dias.

“I want to build the largest social center in Brazil, in terms of fighting. There are two goals that come together: to create the best martial arts training center in the country, with a differentiated structure, so that people can really develop the sport in Brazil, as well as work on the social side. I want to be able to pass on my knowledge of 30 years, be it from the fighting part or the administrative part, to anyone. My idea is to reproduce this throughout the institute and make here a reference in what is said about fighting in Brazil. I want to have the best fight training structure in Brazil in the next three years, and in the next ten years, the best structure in the world.”

So ‘Dede’ will continue to coach, and will coach fighters who don’t represent Nova Uniao. And he will continue to manage fighters. And he will continue to run Shooto Brazil. So this not in any way a retirement, in fact, it’s an expansion.