The insult that made a man out of Werdum
Fabricio Werdum: “She told me to do it, that it would be fun, but I declined. I told her I had no idea what jiu-jitsu was, but she eventually convinced me to do it.”
It is an old story, the stuff of ads in the back of comic books, and this vintage video for Gracie Jiu-Jitsu.
But it happened to Fabricio Werdum, and started him in BJJ and eventually the opportunity to be the baddest man on the planet, instead of the Interim baddest man on the planet, which does not have the same ring.
He was 21 years old, living in Porto Alegre, Brazil, he went to the beach with his girlfriend Larissa. Little did he know that waiting at the beach for him was her ex-boyfriend Marquinhos (Little Marcos) who knew Jiu-Jitsu.
“I guess he wanted to embarrass me in front of her and her entire family,” Werdum recalled to Guilherme Cruz for MMAFighting.com. “So he challenged me to fight him in a jiu-jitsu match right there at the beach.”
“‘I like women, not jiu-jitsu'” he said. “She told me to do it, that it would be fun, but I declined. I told her I had no idea what jiu-jitsu was, but she eventually convinced me to do it.”
Werdum got triangled in under a minute. Yah, of all the subs …
Werdum started BJJ the next day, at Marcio Corletta’s Winner-Behring academy. A year later he won the Mundials as a blue belt. But he he never got another shot at Marcos.
“I met him later and invited him to train with me, but he never accepted the challenge,” said Werdum. “He always had an excuse. Elbow, shoulder, he was always injured. He heard that I won the world championship in the blue belt and never accepted to train with me.”
“He recently contacted me, inviting me to teach a seminar in his gym. Yeah, right…”
“If I never had accepted my girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend’s challenge, I would never start training jiu-jitsu. And thank God I failed that test, or I wouldn’t be where I am today.
“And you see how things are. Ten years later, I submitted the best in the world, and now I’m fighting for the UFC heavyweight title.”
Werdum of course fights UFC heavyweight champion Cain Velasquez in the main event of UFC 188 on June 13, 2015 at Arena Ciudad de México in Mexico City, Mexico. While Cain is the favorite, Werdum has been training at 12,009 feet and Cain has not. The five-round grind at altitude may feel like a ten-round grind, and could make the difference.
“In a perfect world, I see him trying to take me down,” said Werdum. “I land a front kick to the body or his face, or I submit him quickly after he takes me down. In a more realistic scenario, I see him gassing after three or four rounds. People will be surprised. They are used to watching Velasquez with that non-stop rhythm, but he’s not used with high-altitude and hasn’t fought in two years. We’ll see.”
And did Larissa dump him after the loss via Brazilian banana hammock teabag?
“She knew I never did jiu-jitsu before, so it wasn’t an issue. At least I think so,” said Werdum. “You never know. I’m not sure. Who knows, maybe she cheated on me after that [laughs].”