Meet Pedro Valente Jr., the only person in attendance at both
UFC
1 and
UFC White House: Freedom 250.
The eldest son of one of Helio Gracie’s most respected disciples,
Pedro Valente (1938-2016), Pedro Valente Jr. can declare that he is
the only eyewitness who was at the first UFC event in 1993 in
Denver and at UFC at the White House in 2026.
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“It was a unique emotion to see where this sport has come,” Valente
told Sherdog. “I couldn’t help but remember the tribute that Rorion
[Gracie] paid to his father in the center of the Octagon at UFC 1.
The old man would certainly be very emotional to see where it has
come.”
Along with his brothers, Joaquim and Guilherme, Valente leads the
Valente Brothers Jiu-Jitsu academy in Miami, which counts among its
students children and grandchildren of U.S. President Donald J.
Trump.
“We ended up creating a bond of friendship beyond the mats, which
is why we were invited,” Valente said.
According to him, the idea for the
Ultimate Fighting Championship at the White House came from an
informal conversation at his academy.
“Talking once with Jared and Ivanka [Kushner], I told them the
story of Teddy Roosevelt, who in 1904 organized a fight at the
White House between American boxing and wrestling champion Joe
Grant, and judo master Yoshitsugu Yamashita (a disciple of Jigoro
Kano). After seeing [Yamashita] submit the much larger American
several times, Roosevelt sent a letter to his son, Kermit, telling
him what he had witnessed. [Yamashita] had easily dominated the
American, even though he was much smaller, but that if Americans
learned jiu-jitsu they would be superior. Ivanka was impressed by
this story, which happened 120 years ago; she’s brilliant.”
Valente relayed that Ivanka told her father, President Trump: “They
called Dana White and that’s how the idea for this UFC at the White
House came about.”
Known for prioritizing the self-defense advocated by Helio Gracie
over the competitive jiu-jitsu so popular in the U.S. today, the
Valente brothers are still considered the main guardians of Master
Helio’s memory, even having a small museum in the basement of the
academy. Besides Trump’s kids and grandkids, the children of Tom
Brady and Gisele Bundchen are now among Valente’s students. Three
years after the Brazilian model separated from arguably the great
quarterback in NFL history, she married the youngest of the Valente
children, Joaquim, in December 2025.