Fourteen years ago, at the concrete relic known as San Diego Sports Arena, Jon Jones headlined an afternoon fight card live on Versus TV against the wrestling dean of the custodial arts, “The Janitor” Vladmir Matyushenko. It didn’t last long. Jones shot for a takedown just a minute in, pinned Matyushenko’s arm to the mat with his knee to get a crucifix, and rained elbows down on his forehead until Herb Dean stopped the fight.
Earlier that same day, a 20-year-old kid named Charles Oliveira made the walk for the first time in the UFC to take on Darren Elkins. That one ended even more quickly. Elkins picked up Oliveira, coolly dumped him in the middle of the Octagon, and moments later found himself panic-tapping to a triangle armbar. The whole thing lasted 41 seconds. Elkins became the first cautionary of one of the most storied careers in the UFC.
Never willingly go to the ground with Charlie “Do Bronx.”
Fast forward a decade-a-half and a laundry list of broken records later, and here we are again. Jones is headlining a big fight card at UFC 309 against Stipe Miocic this Saturday, this time to defend his heavyweight title, and Oliveira is taking on Michael Chandler in the co-main event, in what he hopes is a chance to position himself back in the lightweight title picture.
The journey has been a long one for Oliveira, a strange, ever-careening career that defies convention. At 35 years old, Oliveira is one of the most successful fighters on the UFC’s roster, a former champion, an icon in his native Sao Paulo, Brazil, and one of the most respected names in the history of the sport.
“I say this all the time, I don’t feel like I’m 35,” Oliveira told me through his translator Fabiano Buskei. “I feel much younger. I have the spirit, the mindset, and the heart of a younger person.”
We don’t perhaps appreciate Oliveira’s perseverance as we should, which in the macro sense has come to resemble the Elkins fight spread over many years. The early takedowns have ultimately become just set-ups for his triumphs. He came in quietly as a 20-year-old prospect and has stood in against the names of his era in two weight classes. He lost eight times in his first seven years in the UFC, which is the mark of a journeyman. He brought red flags with him wherever he went, missing weight three times as a featherweight, prompting Dana White to mandate a move up to 155. He was often seen as grumpy and irritable during fight weeks and didn’t (still doesn’t) speak a lick of English. I was there in Pittsburgh when he crushed Nik Lentz with an illegal knee and had the subsequent submission changed to a “no contest.”
Good and bad have had an epic tug-of-war throughout Oliveira’s career.
Yet all along the way he’s steadily kept winning. Not just winning, but finishing people. Tapping them out. It was sporadic at first. Win two, lose one, win another. But in 2018, he put his foot on the gas. He won 11 straight. He became the UFC’s lightweight champion. He went headlong into the buzzsaws of the day — Dustin Poirier, Chandler, Justin Gaethje — and broke their blades. He collected end-of-the-night bonuses with greedy consistency. Has he earned a nod to the Hall of Fame one day? It’s all but certain.
And of course, he missed weight in a mega-title defense against Gaethje, which resulted in him being stripped of his title. The omnipresent adversity of an otherwise remarkable, at times crazy career. It’s been a lot to put behind him.
“Actually, you don’t put these things behind you,” he says. “You just always remember what you went through, because I always remember the people that believed in me. I think about my parents, I’m so grateful for them and the support that they gave me. They believed in this, in this just craziness back then. Because they said it was crazy [when I started out]. That’s what people said, so they believed in this crazy. So, I just very thankful for all the people that believed and they made it happen. They helped me.”
The first Chandler fight came at the high point of Oliveira’s scorched earth run. After 11 years in the UFC, he not only won the vacated lightweight title with a second-round knockout of Chandler, he surpassed the UFC’s record for finishes (17) that same night. It was a breakthrough of monumental proportions, and when he returned to Sao Paulo with the belt, thousands of people greeted him as a hero.
“Brazil has been with me, they’ve supported me the whole way,” he says of that reception. “I’m just very happy with all these people that love what I do and are happy with my work.”
As he attempts to get back into title contention this Saturday night at Madison Square Garden, Oliveira has become a one-man billboard for staying power. To keep plugging away. To never give up. And to fully appreciate Oliveira means to accept his prowess as a fighter along with his flaws. The bumps in the road. The endless setbacks that make his triumphs that much more improbable.
“It’s a beautiful story — a beautiful story,” he says, when thinking back to his debut all those years ago in San Diego. “A boy who had a dream, came from the community. He didn’t just leave it as a dream. He went out there and the blessings of God, and I am thankful for all the people that helped me and supported me, and God for staying with me and he was able to make dreams come true.”
Not that he’s done. The wild “Do Bronx” experience rolls on some 5,000 days after it started, and the posterchild for perseverance insists there’s plenty more to come. His UFC record tallies for finishes (20) and submissions (16) are still works in progress. And the once grumpy kid is now a pensive former champ who’s seen it all over the years. Who knows, if he gets by Chandler again this weekend, the next chapter he’s working on may become the most improbable of all.
When you ask him about it, he sounds more like Friedrich Nietzsche than he does a pro athlete.
“It’s the dream, the legacy,” he says. “I tell people, it’s the records. When people say, ‘Oh, no, you’re getting old. You’re too old for this.’ I just want say, no, no, I’m not. What you throw at the universe, the universe throws back at you.”
