Vitor Belfort: Where It All Began

Vitor Belfort: Where It All Began

By Alex Conway 

If you weren’t watching back then (like I wasn’t) then in order to understand how special and unique Vitor Belfort was when he made his UFC debut at UFC 12 in Dothan, Alabama, you have to put a little leg work in.

I’ve toyed with the idea of watching all the UFC numbered events in succession before, but I’m finally putting my UFC Fight Pass subscription to good work, and I’ve burned through UFC 1-11 in the last two weeks.

Today I made it to UFC 12, an event where I knew Belfort made his debut (along with Joe Rogan. More on that in a little bit) and I got excited to see a familiar name.

Belfort is still an active fighter today, one who has been a favourite of mine since I become a fan around 2009, and I’ve actually seen his fights against Tra Telligman and Scott Ferrozzo several times simply because of this fandom.

But once you’ve sat through that many hours of one minute fights where the winner was usually whoever hadn’t lied on their resume (I’m looking at you Julian Sanchez) or didn’t gas first, or fights that went 30 minutes and ended in a stalemate, Belfort entering into my UFC binge mode was breathtaking.

Belfort looked like a fighter that had been training in our era and time traveled back to the arena that night, with skills that only a terminator from the future could obtain.

The way he moved his hands was like nothing I’ve seen to this point in the experience and the way he picked his spots and manipulated his rhythm, his accuracy and timing was mesmerizing.

Tank Abbott was commentating his fight with Scott Ferrozzo and before the fight started dismissed the 205-pound Belfort being able to beat Ferrozzo because “Roy Jones isn’t knocking out Mike Tyson.” He was referring to Belfort as Jones and Ferrozzo as Tyson.

Belfort thumped Ferrozzo with a straight left that put Ferrozzo down and then took side mount and rained down punches that look like nothing special if you’ve only watched MMA for the last 3 years, but if you’d been a fan back then probably looked revolutionary.

Even Ferrozzo continuing to fight after John McCarthy had stopped the fight seemed like a novel idea because to thist point in my viewing I don’t think I’ve seen where a fighter got knocked out in such a way that he went into autopilot mode and tried to wrestle his opponent and referee while still clearly being compromised.

Also, the broadcast team couldn’t decide if they should call Belfort “Vitor” or “Victor.” Joe Rogan in the post-fight interview called him Victor every time he asked him a question despite having just interviewed 3,000 members of his team backstage less than half an hour prior, a moment where the teammates chanted Vitor’s name over and over again.

The young respectful man that Belfort was never even corrected Rogan.

If you’ve got copious amounts of time (or even if you don’t but want to make a bad decision about how to spend your time like me), do yourself a favor, fire up your UFC Fight Pass account, and travel back in time and experience this time as if you are ordering UFC 239 and watching it live and for the first time.

It truly gives you a new perspective on what fighting is today and where it’s come from, this Belfort experience being one of many I’m sure to have.