Luis Felipe Alvim is the new Juiz de Fora Fight waterweight champion. But he was originally expecting to cheer on the title-winner as a fan.
He nearly didn’t get tickets to the fight that he would eventually win.
To rustle up the funds, the 22-year-old and his girlfriend attempted to sell brownies, but were eventually forced to sacrifice the cash they needed for bills.
Though the fight was meant to be between Carlos Eduardo Rufino and Claudinei Kall, Kall pulled out after Rufino missed the weight by almost a pound.
In a moment of madness that later proved genius, Alvim stepped in against Rufino.
Someone needed to. But you wouldn’t think the best candidate would be someone who had never fought MMA before, even if he did have a few muay thai and jiu-jitsu tournaments under his belt.
Even worse, his opponent Rufino had been defeated only once in his career – a detail that would tip this true story into the ‘jumping the shark’ category if it were a film plot.
[Rufino] took me down and landed some very heavy shots.
And I thought oh sh*t, what the f*ck am I doing here?
But, astonishingly, Alvim would end up winning the fight with a triangle choke – a chokehold used in judo.
Of course, the 1,500-strong crowd went wild.
To top off an incredible story, Alvimm proposed to his girlfriend after receiving the belt (and she said yes).
Alvim said:
I showed my girlfriend – my fiancée now – the trailer of the movie Troy yesterday, in which this kid tells Achilles he’d never fight a giant like Achilles was about to do.
And Achilles says: ‘That’s why your name won’t be remembered’.
That suck in my mind.
Source: indy100.com
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