Brazilian fans have always lamented the disproportion between the
number of Brazilian fighters and Brazilian referees in the
Ultimate Fighting Championship. Even though Brazil has the
second most athletes on the promotion’s roster, behind only the
United States, after Mario Yamasaki withdrew from refereeing panels
there was a period of several years during which no Brazilian
referees were being used by American athletic commissions.
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That changed in 2024 when former Shooto and
Cage
Rage champion, Vitor “Shaolin”
Ribeiro, began to get the call more frequently. Thanks to his
excellent performances and high accuracy, the black belt under
Andre
Pederneiras was chosen to referee the title fight between
Joshua
Van and Tatsuro
Taira in the co-main event of UFC 328.
In an interview with Sherdog a month after the fight, Ribeiro
commented on his decision to stop the fight at 1 minute and 32
seconds of the fifth round, giving the TKO win to Van. “It was a
very good fight to referee where both had good moments until the
fourth round, but when Taira took a sequence of 14 punches without
returning any, I had no alternative but to stop it. Enough is
enough,” analyzed the Brazilian, revealing that despite receiving
some criticism, he remains fully convinced that he made the right
decision. “I wasn’t going to let him fall unconscious with his face
on the canvas by one more punch. The Japanese fighter is extremely
tough mentally and didn’t want to give up, but as a referee I had
to fulfill my role. It’s actions like this that can reduce a 10-or
15-year career to two years. A series of concussions can totally
change the course of a career. Today the sport has betting and a
lot involved so it’s natural to see more people complaining, but
the referee is there to preserve the physical integrity of those
who put on the show,” Shaolin stated.
As a four-time Brazilian jiu-jitsu world champion with a 20-5 MMA
record, having won two of the world’s most important lightweight
titles of his era, Ribeiro emphasizes the importance of the referee
preserving the athlete’s integrity, drawing a parallel between
Taira and Van and his fight with Gesias
Cavalcante at K-1 Heroes in 2007. “Like Taira, 20 years ago I
had that old-school mentality of fighting to the death and never
giving up. I took a very strong punch from Gesias that injured my
eye (suffered retinal detachment), today I thank the referee for
stopping it because my mentality was to fight to the death, just
like Taira.”
The first MMA world champion from Nova Uniao, “Shaolin” also
revealed to Sherdog that he played an important role in the early
career of a talented boy from Amazonas who slept on the Nova Uniao
mats and helped him a lot in his training to win the Cage Rage
belt: Jose
Aldo.
“In 2005, I had left Shooto and was fighting at Cage Rage in
England, and the event offered two air tickets,” Ribeiro said. “One
for sure was for [Andre] Pederneiras, so we had the idea of giving
the other to ‘Junior’ [Aldo], who needed to implement his Sherdog
account so “Dede” could take him abroad. After my fight, he stayed
another month at my agent Alex’s house, who arranged two fights for
him in local events (UK Fight Night and Battle of Britain). Aldo
knocked both opponents out quickly, and it became easier for Dede
to sell him to Pancrase and then WEC. I’m so proud to have helped
him in the beginning, Junior is such a wonderful and talented
guy”
Living in New York since 2008, “Shaolin” now divides his routine
between jiu-jitsu classes at his academy in New Jersey and MMA
refereeing. The Brazilian started refereeing amateur fights in 2014
and soon after was credentialed by the New York State Athletic
Commission. Today, Ribeiro
has already refereed nearly 200 fights, according to his Sherdog
referee profile.
„My life has been dedicated to jiu-jitsu and then to MMA,“ he said, „and I am extremely happy to be able to give back to the sport
everything I received from it, whether by teaching my art or
refereeing in MMA.“