5 Things You Might Not Know About Marcus Almeida

One Championship could have something special on its hands with Marcus Almeida.

The undefeated 32-year-old Brazilian will take the next step in his development when he confronts Hugo Cunha in a One Championship 157 heavyweight feature on Friday at Singapore Indoor Stadium in Kallang, Singapore. Almeida has kicked off his mixed martial arts career with back-to-back victories. He last appeared at One Championship “Winter Warriors,” where he dispatched Ji Won Kang with a rear-naked choke a mere 2:27 into their Dec. 3 encounter.

As Almeida prepares to clear his next hurdle in the cage, here are five things you might not know about him:

1. He has commonality with an athletic icon.

Almeida was born on Jan. 8, 1980 in Santos, Brazil—a city of some 400,000 people on the southeastern coast of the South American nation. It has been home to the legendary Pele, a man widely regarded as the greatest soccer player of all-time. Pele led Brazil to three FIFA World Cup championships and scored 77 goals in 92 career games with the Brazilian national team.

2. His rise to prominence was not by design.

“Buchecha” was something of an accidental arrival in the Brazilian jiu-jitsu world. His connection? He accompanied his sister to training when he was 14 years old, got a taste of the discipline and fell in love with it. No one could have foreseen what followed.

3. Few can match his accomplishments on the mat.

A Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt under Rodrigo Cavaca, Almeida ranks as one of the top grapplers in history. A 13-time gold medalist at the Mundials and a two-time gold medalist at the Abu Dhabi Combat Club Submission Wrestling World Championships, he boasts an astounding 138-14 career record, with 72 wins by submission.

4. He chose top-flight handlers.

Almeida has trained out of the American Kickboxing Academy in San Jose, California, and American Top Team in Coconut Creek, Florida, where he has enjoyed access to a number of world-class trainers and countless accomplished stablemates.

5. His transition to mixed martial arts has gone swimmingly.

The Cavaca protégé has put away his first two MMA opponents in 5:22 combined, both of them via tapout. Almeida took care of Anderson “Braddock” Silva with a north-south choke 2:55 into their One Championship “Revolution” pairing on Sept. 24, 2021 and paired it with his aforementioned stoppage of Kang a little more than two months later.