IVC 1: Dan Severn and Gary Goodridge Steal The Show in Sao Paulo

After helping Frederico Lapenda to promote four editions of his World Vale Tudo Championship, Sergio Batarelli decided to go solo. Thus, the International Vale Tudo Championship was born, the first edition of which welcomed to Brazil renowned Ultimate Fighting Championship names including Dan Severn, Carl Worsham and Gary Goodridge, where they would face new Brazilian talents such as Ebenezer Fontes Braga, “The” Pedro Otavio and Andre Cardoso. IVC 1: Real Fight Tournament was held on July 6, 1997 at the sumptuous Maksoud Plaza hotel in Sao Paulo in front of an audience of just 500 paying guests.

This first edition of the IVC was marked by an openweight tournament of eight fighters—four Brazilians and four North Americans—and a superfight between UFC legend Severn and Braga, who four months earlier had fought a 20-minute war with Kevin Randleman in the UVF 6 tournament in Rio de Janeiro. Severn, who already had 19 MMA fights and only three losses, all by submission (to Royce Gracie, Ken Shamrock and Mark Coleman) arrived as the favorite, but “The Beast” was aware that the boy who had lumped up Randleman at UVF 6 despite giving up nearly 50 pounds to him, wouldn't be an easy fight. Once again Braga exceeded expectations. At the beginning, the Thai Boxing/Budokan athlete feinted a double leg on the wrestler, who instinctively lowered his arms to sprawl and received a powerful hook from the Brazilian. From then on, Braga never stopped. More accustomed to fighting in the ring, the Rio native used the ropes very well to defend all the two-time UFC champion's takedown attempts. Punches were coming in from all sides, but the Severn’s absurd capacity for punishment didn’t let him fall. At the end of the first round, when the wrestler was already bleeding a lot due to a cut in his mouth, there was a frank exchange of blows where Severn managed to open a deep cut on the Brazilian's eyebrow, which started to bleed a lot, leading the doctors to interrupt the fight to check on the injury.

When the fight restarted, Severn finally managed to take things to the ground, squeezing the Brazilian into the nets that delimited the ring and finally managing to get the fight back with his feared ground-and-pound. Bleeding profusely and trapped in the net, Ebenezer forced the referee and promoter Batarelli to stop the fight, declaring Severn's victory at 8:17. Still in the ring, the American recognized the Brazilian's performance by raising his hand to the local fans. “He is without a doubt one of the toughest fighters I have ever faced and he has a great future,” Severn told me as he left the ring.

“The Pedro” Surprises Coleman’s Protégé

Despite making his vale tudo debut, Coleman's training partner, the massive 264-pound Brian Keck, was the favorite to win the tournament. But the underdog Pedro Otavio, nicknamed “The Pedro,” surprised him. Keck started the fight by taking him down and falling into the Brazilian's guard. After surviving a powerful sequence of ground-and-pound, “The Pedro” returned to his feet, from where he began to have a clear advantage, almost knocking out the wrestler on two occasions. In the second round, Keck got tired and, unable to take the Brazilian to the ground, began to take a beating. In the 16th minute he managed to take Otavio down, but ended up being swept by the Budokan representative, who went straight into mount, applying a barrage of punches to the American. Keck turned his back and ended up being submitted with a rear naked choke. As the crowd cheered, “The Pedro” celebrated by doing a clumsy backflip, falling backwards into the ring.

On the same side of the bracket, Cardoso, from Para state in northern Brazil, would guarantee an all-Brazilian semifinal by knocking out three-time Canadian wrestling champion John Gnap in 30 seconds. After knocking Gnap down with a sequence of punches, “Andrezao” settled the score with a soccer kick. The other two Brazilian representatives in the tournament, both of whom were well under 200 pounds, were quickly defeated. Augusto Menezes Santos managed to escape from a guillotine, but ended up tapping to Goodridge’s trademark crucifix in just 32 seconds. Aloisio Freitas Neto felt the huge difference in weight from Worsham and after being disadvantaged in his striking he ended up taping to a guillotine at 25 seconds of the fight.

“Big Daddy” Prevails in the Final

In the semifinals, while the Brazilians Otavio and Cardoso were fighting a war, the Goodridge and Worsham had a match that looked suspiciously like a fix, which ended with Worsham taping out at 43 seconds to loud boos from the Brazilian audience. Meanwhile, on the other side, “The Pedro” started to get the worst of it on his feet and was taken down by “Andrezao,” who moved to mount, then took Otavio’s back—a trap that the slippery Pedro always liked to make to get into his opponent's guard. It had already worked with Keck and it worked again with Cardoso. After delivering a barrage of punches on Andre´s guard, João Ricardo's student ended the fight with an Achilles lock at 8:41.

This meant that “The Pedro” reached the final having fought almost 28 minutes while Goodridge, who was 30 pounds heavier to boot, had not fought even 2 minutes. Even so, the Brazilian outdid himself, putting up a great fight in the final. It was a 16-minute fight in which the momentum shifted constantly for almost the entire time. The Canadian started better by taking top position, gaining half guard and almost mounting the Brazilian. But encouraged by the fans and very well guided by his master Joao Ricardo, Otavio once again managed to escape the attack on his back and swept to top position. It was at this moment that Goodridge starred in the most hilarious scene of the event by placing both feet inside the Brazilian's speedo. Already quite tired, “The Pedro” returned to the fight on his feet, but the Canadian took him down and, realizing that the Brazilian was already exhausted, he began to hit him from the side position. No longer able to bench press those 250 pounds as he had done several times previously, Otavio decided to give up 16 minutes and 15 seconds into the fight. The audience recognized the Brazilian's heart with a standing ovation.

If the inaugural IVC didn't end very well for the Brazilians, the story would be very different in two months, when I would return to Maksoud Plaza to witness the second edition of the IVC, a 90 kg (198-pound) tournament in which representatives of Brazil’s top two muay thai academies, Wanderlei Silva (Chute Boxe) and Artur Mariano (Thai Boxing) would overrun the foreign invaders, guaranteeing a historic national final, which established the IVC worldwide as the realest vale tudo show that ever existed.