Brazil

Brazil is one of the two countries where mixed martial arts was invented rather than imported. Long before the sport had a name, unified rules or weight classes, Brazilian fighters were meeting in open-weight contests that pitted one discipline against another — and the lessons learned in those contests still shape how the sport is fought everywhere else.

Where the style comes from

The Brazilian approach begins on the ground. Jiu-jitsu, adapted in Brazil from judo across the first half of the twentieth century, was built for exactly the problem mixed martial arts poses: what a fighter does when the contest leaves its feet. Its answer — control from the bottom as well as the top, submissions from positions that look like defeat — gave the country an entire generation of fighters who were never out of a fight while conscious.

Luta livre grew alongside it as a rival grappling tradition, without the gi and with a different attachment to leg attacks. The rivalry between the two was sharp for decades, and the sport is better for it: fighters who had to prepare for both styles arrived at something broader than either.

Striking came into the mix through muay thai, adopted in Brazilian gyms with an emphasis on clinch work, knees and forward pressure that suited the country's temperament for coming forward. The combination of a grappler who does not fear the ground and a striker who does not fear the pocket is what most people mean when they call a fighter Brazilian.

The gyms

Brazilian fighters cluster around a small number of teams with long lineages, and those teams train in distinct ways. Some are grappling houses where the striking is built on top of a mat game; others are striking academies that added wrestling. A fighter's team therefore predicts a great deal about how they fight, which is why the gym is worth reading on a profile before the record is.

Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Curitiba and the northern city of Manaus each produced their own scenes, and their fighters do not all resemble one another. The pages below list every Brazilian fighter in the catalogue, with the gym, the weight class and how each of their last five fights ended.