Fabrício “Vai Cavalo” Werdum

Fabrício Werdum won the black belt ultra-heavyweight world title twice, in 2003 and 2004, for Winner-Behring, years before becoming UFC heavyweight champion. In 2003 he beat Leonardo Leite in the division final and also took open class bronze. In 2004 he beat Fernando Tererê in the final.

Born on July 30, 1977, in Porto Alegre, he was trained by Sylvio Behring. He won the Worlds as a blue belt in 2000 at super-heavyweight and took bronze as a brown belt in 2002. At ADCC he won the over-99 kg division in 2007 and in 2009, when he beat Roberto Abreu in the final, and he was inducted into the ADCC Hall of Fame in 2024.

In MMA he submitted Fedor Emelianenko in Strikeforce in 2010 and, in the UFC, won the interim heavyweight title by knocking out Mark Hunt in November 2014. In June 2015 he unified the title with a guillotine on Cain Velasquez at UFC 188 in Mexico, and lost it to Stipe Miocic in May 2016.

In 2018 an out-of-competition sample collected on April 25 tested positive for trenbolone, and USADA imposed a two-year suspension, later reduced for substantial assistance. He returned to competition in May 2020, left the UFC that same year and, in 2023, faced Junior dos Santos in a bare-knuckle bout.