Leo Vieira On Legendary ADCC Match With Mark Kerr: ‘It Was Like David vs Goliath’
CheckMat founder Leo Vieira is making his final preparations before facing Chael Sonnen in an ADCC rules superfight at the 2017 ADCC World Championships next week in Espoo, Finland.
No stranger to the big stage, Vieira is a two-time ADCC world champion, a black belt world champ, and a two-time Pan American winner. Yet what may be his most memorable moment of all came well before his most important accolades.
Back in 2000, the ADCC World Championships was finding its footing as a competition unlike any other. The invite-only tournament brought the best judoka, wrestlers, MMA fighters, and all other grapplers from all over the world to compete under one rule set. Its inception in 1998 was a wild success, and fans from all over were starting to tune in each year.
After receiving his black belt in 1997, Vieira was invited to compete in the tournament's -77kg division. However all the attention was on another man, Mark Kerr. At the time, Kerr was the biggest name in MMA at the time after winning back-to-back UFC heavyweight tournaments and beginning to dominate in Japan at PRIDE events. "The Smashing Machine" was a fan favorite and to some extent gave validity to the new ADCC tournament.
"He was coming off a lot of strong fights," Vieira said. "He was killing people.
Everybody was looking at him, nobody was looking at me.Vieira’s first year at ADCC was impressive. He advanced to the semifinals but was knocked out of the championship bracket by ADCC champion Jean Jaques Machado. After getting so close to earning a medal, Vieira set his sights on the absolute division.
Kerr on the other hand was invited to the +99kg division and dominated his bracket, beating legends such as Josh Barnett, Rigan Machado, and Ricco Rodriguez on his way to gold.
"Leozinho" was the smallest competitor to sign up for the absolute division, and by luck of the draw he was paired up with the heavyweight winner Kerr.
"I think they chose me for an easy fight for Mark’s first fight," Vieira said. "And then that went wrong. It was one of his toughest fights."
Even though Kerr outweighed Vieira by more than 100 pounds, the match was electric and competitive from start to finish. Vieira defended takedown after takedown and guard pass after guard pass until the Smashing Machine started to fade. As a result, Vieira's confidence sky-rocketed.
"In the end, the fight finished as a draw," Vieira said. "But they gave me a negative point and gave him the fight. He was sick and throwing up in the bathroom later. But then he felt OK and went back out and won the entire thing."
The match turned out to be one of the biggest in ADCC history. Fans would talk about this match for decades to come. In fact, it even changed Brazilian jiu-jitsu culture as a whole.
"This fight connected everybody in jiu-jitsu," Vieira said. "Before it was very segmented by the teams, because we were so young. When you go to the airports or hotels in Abu Dhabi you can see Brazilians here, Americans there, all the different nationalities. But the Brazilians had jiu-jitsu, vale tudo, luta livre people. We all didn’t mix back then.
Particularly this fight had everyone saying let’s forget the different styles and cheer for Brazil. Really after this competition is when we broke that wall and started cross training everything.After the legendary match, the only thing Kerr had to say to Vieira was, ‘You’re pretty tough.’ We might as well leave it at that.
Leo Vieira takes on "The American Gangster" Chael Sonnen in an ADCC rules superfight at the 2017 ADCC World Championships. You can watch the entire event right here on FloGrappling.com
How to Watch the ADCC 2017 World Championships
On TV: Now available on Roku and Apple TV 4 -- download the FloSports app today.STREAMING: Available only on FloGrappling via monthly or yearly memberships. A yearly FloPRO subscription provides access to ALL FloSports sites. SIGN UP HERE
Join The Conversation On Social
• Follow us on Twitter @FloGrappling • Follow us on Instagram @FloGrappling
• Follow us on Facebook