Vale Tudo Relics: From Campgrounds to the Sport’s Biggest Stage

After a week of commitments to promote his long-awaited Professional Fighters League showdown with Francis Ngannou, reigning PFL heavyweight champion Renan Ferreira finally returned to Florida. There, he planned to dedicate himself to what remained of his training camp ahead of their PFL Super Fights “Battle of the Giants: Brace for Impact” main event on Oct. 19 at The Mayadeen in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. To the winner goes the newly minted PFL superfight heavyweight championship.

“I’ve been with the PFL for almost five years, and I’ve never seen anything so gigantic,” Ferreira told Sherdog.com. “The guys are doing scenes straight out of a movie, like ‘King Kong vs. Godzilla.’ We filmed a lot.”

Even though he spent time with his family in Brazil after his 21-second rout of Ryan Bader in the PFL Super Fights “PFL vs. Bellator Champs” headliner on Feb. 24, Ferreira maintained a dedicated training schedule at American Top Team in Coconut Creek, Florida. He has had one man in his crosshairs.

“We have been focused on this fight with Ngannou since the fight with Bader,” he said. “In Brazil, I kept training more focused on the physical part, but in August, I returned to ATT and we started to focus more on the technical and tactical part.”

The 6-foot-8 Brazilian has already begun anticipating the approach Ngannou might take against him.

“I think that, at first, he should test himself controlling the distance, in boxing, always trying to corner me against the fence to try to take me down, but we have been working hard for that,” Ferreira said. “As for me, I will work very cautiously, moving a lot, without initially exposing myself too much, but I believe that due to the characteristics of both of us, a knockout will end up happening by the second round.”

The plot in the Ferreira-Ngannou clash extends beyond a title. Some might call it a duel of survivors. By now, most know Ngannou’s story as an African immigrant who crossed the Sahara and wound up living on the streets in Paris before rising to mixed martial arts superstardom. Ferreira’s unlikely ascent follows a similar narrative. Between the ages of 7 and 15, he lived in a small wooden shack with no electricity, sharing space with seven siblings, his mother and his father.

“Our light was from an oil lamp,” Ferreira said. His parents made sure to keep him in school, even though he often went hungry. “The nearest city was located 30 kilometers from where I lived,” he said. “To study, I had to take a bus at four in the morning. If it rained, the bus would get stuck and we wouldn’t make it.”

Ferreira and his family moved to the small town of Porangatu when he was 15. There, he took a job and continued his schooling. “I worked in a mechanic’s shop and a carpentry shop,” Ferreira said. “At the age of 17, I went to the state of Mato Grosso to work for an energy company, where I did everything from clearing paths in the woods to nailing poles to the ground—a lot of manual labor.” He did not discover martial arts—more accurately, it did not discover him—until he was 22. “I always did well in sports activities at school—athletics, handball, basketball—but since I had to work to help my family, I didn't have time to dedicate myself,” Ferreira said. “When this social project came to my city and I started training jiu-jitsu, it was wonderful. After three months, I signed up for a championship and won.”

Ferreira’s mentor promoted an MMA event on Dec. 14, 2013 and entered him in the main event. “I knocked out my opponent in 43 seconds,” he said, “and that lit a fire in me.” The potential of the monstrous Brazilian caught the attention of his boss at a security company. Anderson Manga managed to convince him to train at one of the country’s best-known MMA camps in 2017.

“He had a connection at Team Nogueira, and I went with all my courage, without a penny in my pocket,” Ferreira said. “I did a test without any technique yet and with a lot of willpower, and [Antonio Rodrigo] ‘Minotauro’ [Nogueira] liked it. I spent three months sleeping on top of the kimono and eating once a day. I did odd jobs as a security guard at a party house, earning 30 reais for four hours of work so I could eat, but with a lot of determination, I managed to achieve my goals.”

After three consecutive knockouts at events in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, Ferreira made his international debut in the Legacy Fighting Alliance on June 28, 2019. It was a disappointing start. Ferreira ran over Brett Martin, only to be disqualified due to illegal punches to the back of his opponent’s head. He rebounded two months later at LFA 74, where he submitted Jared Vanderaa with a second-round triangle choke. His talents drew the attention of the PFL, which invited him to partake in its 2020 season.

“Since it was a [grand prix format], it would give me more opportunities to have more consecutive fights,” Ferreira said. “I still didn’t feel technically prepared to debut in the UFC. I wanted to have more fights, and the PFL gave me that. We signed in 2020, but then the pandemic came.”

While he did not feel ready to make the jump to the Ultimate Fighting Championship, Ferreira still faced the biggest challenge of his career in his PFL debut. On the other side of the cage stood former UFC champion Fabricio Werdum—a man widely recognized as one of the 10 greatest heavyweights of all-time. Ferreira managed to knock out Werdum in the first round of their PFL 3 confrontation on May 6, 2021, only to see the result later overturned to a no contest. Replays showed he had tapped out to a Werdum triangle choke—away from the referee’s view—earlier in the match.

“I had that setback in 2021,” Ferreira said. “I couldn’t become champion. In 2022, I had some injuries and couldn’t make it, but after all the difficulties I went through, things started to happen for me in 2023. I moved to the United States, the PFL bought Bellator, Francis signed, I became [the $1 million] grand prix champion and, soon after, I beat Bader to have the chance to fight Francis.”

Ferreira made certain to optimize his seven-figure payday from the PFL, as his attention immediately turned to family.

“I didn’t make any big investments,” he said. “I just bought a house in Brazil and gave my parents, siblings and children the basic structure I always dreamed of having, like health insurance and a place to live. I’ll think about the rest calmly, in addition to reinvesting in my training, of course.”

Experience has taught Ferreira the importance of having a strong support system in place for the remainder of his MMA career. American Top Team certainly offers it. The gym provides him with regular access to top-flight stablemates—they include Junior dos Santos, Marcos Rogerio de Lima, Sergei Pavlovich and Marcus Almeida—and a host of qualified, world-class trainers, from Gabriel de Oliveira for boxing and Steve Mocco for wrestling to Anderson Franca for muay thai.

“In Brazil, I basically had one heavyweight sparring partner,” Ferreira said. “At ATT, I ended up having 12 or 13, depending on the day. With such diversity of training, it is impossible not to evolve. Not to mention the many high-level coaches.”

Oddsmakers have installed Ngannou as a healthy 3-to-1 favorite ahead of their marquee matchup in the Middle East. Ferreira pays them no mind. “For all the heavyweights he has beaten, Ngannou is considered one of the greatest in history, so it’s natural the he’s the favorite,” he said. “I was also an underdog in the 2023 [PFL heavyweight] final. I bet on my work. I want to arrive very happy and prepared. I’m going to bleed a lot here in the gym to put on a show and win regardless of what people think.”

Should he upset “The Predator,” Ferreira claims to have to no plans to pursue a move to the UFC. However, he likes the idea of following in Ngannou’s footsteps by taking a swing at boxing.

“It’s natural for every athlete to want to go to the UFC because of the showcase it offers,” Ferreira said. “The PFL has valued me a lot and invested a lot in me, so I’m very happy here and very focused on this fight, which will be the biggest of my life. I haven’t thought about the next step after beating Ngannou, but I confess that the idea of fighting in boxing appeals to me.”