Junior dos Santos: Brazil’s boxing heavyweight who took the UFC title on Fox | Ultimate Fighter Reunion

Why fans still care

JUNIOR DOS SANTOS was the heavyweight who boxed. He won the UFC title in 64 seconds in front of a free prime-time audience on Fox, and his three fights with Cain Velasquez shaped the division from 2011 to 2013.

He also beat Stipe Miocic, Who’s Who number 4 in a five-round fight that Miocic later said made him the fighter he became.

Early life

He was born on 30 January 1984 in Caçador, a timber-industry town in Santa Catarina, southern Brazil. The family was poor. His father drank heavily and left, and his mother cleaned furniture factories to raise three children. As a boy and young man he picked beans and apples, delivered newspapers, helped a mason, learned to drive trucks, sold goods on the street and loaded furniture. He later moved to Salvador in Bahia, where he waited tables and then managed a toy shop owned by Vilsana, the woman he would marry.

Getting started

In Salvador a jiu-jitsu black belt, Yuri Carlton, invited him into his nightly MMA classes. He made his professional debut on 16 July 2006 at Demo Fight 1 in Salvador and finished Jailson Silva Santos with a soccer kick in the first round. Luiz Carlos Dórea, a former coach of Brazil’s national boxing team, was in the crowd that night and invited him to train boxing at his academy in Bahia. He trained with Dórea six days a week for about 10 years. “Nobody knows me better than Master Dorea,” he said in 2016.

He won six of his first seven fights in Brazil, at Demo Fight, Minotauro Fights, XFC Brazil and Mo Team League. The one loss was an armbar by Joaquim Ferreira in November 2007.

Career chapters

1. 2006Turns professional in Salvador
2. 2008UFC debut, a first-round finish of Fabrício Werdum
3. 2011Coaches on The Ultimate Fighter 13, then beats Shane Carwin
4. 2011Knocks out Cain Velasquez in 64 seconds to win the UFC heavyweight title
5. 2012Defends against Frank Mir, then loses the title to Velasquez
6. 2013Wheel-kick knockout of Mark Hunt
7. 2014Beats Stipe Miocic in a Fight of the Night
8. 2021Leaves the UFC
9. 2024Wins the inaugural Gamebred Bareknuckle MMA heavyweight title

Into the UFC 2008 to 2011

He made his UFC debut at UFC 90 on 25 October 2008 as a heavy underdog against Fabrício Werdum and stopped him in 81 seconds with a counter right uppercut. Wins followed over Stefan Struve in 54 seconds, Mirko “Cro Cop” Filipović, Gilbert Yvel, Gabriel Gonzaga and Roy Nelson. In 2011 he coached opposite Brock Lesnar, Who’s Who number 7 on The Ultimate Fighter 13. Lesnar pulled out of their UFC 131 fight, and on 11 June 2011 in Vancouver dos Santos beat his replacement, Shane Carwin, by unanimous decision.

Champion 2011 to 2012

On 12 November 2011 at the Honda Center in Anaheim he headlined UFC on Fox 1, the UFC’s first card on the Fox network, shown free in prime time. Velasquez opened with leg kicks. Dos Santos answered to the body, then landed an overhand right near the ear. Velasquez went down, and the punches that followed ended it at 1:04. It was Velasquez’s first professional loss. “My hat is off to him tonight,” Velasquez said. Dos Santos defended the title against Frank Mir at UFC 146 on 26 May 2012 with a second-round TKO.

The Velasquez years 2012 to 2013

On 29 December 2012 at UFC 155 Velasquez dropped him with a right hand in the first round and took him down again and again. He lost the title on scores of 50-45, 50-43 and 50-44. On 25 May 2013 at UFC 160 he knocked out Mark Hunt with a spinning wheel kick in the third round. “I train that a lot in my gym,” he said. The third Velasquez fight, at UFC 166 in Houston on 19 October 2013, went the same way as the second, and he was stopped in the fifth round.

New camps and contender years 2014 to 2019

After the second Velasquez loss he left Dórea for a camp at Nova União in Rio de Janeiro. On 13 December 2014 in Phoenix he beat Stipe Miocic, Who’s Who number 4 by unanimous decision, dropping him with a counter left hook in the third. Both men were bloodied by the fifth and both earned Fight of the Night. He then moved to American Top Team in Coconut Creek, Florida, where he wrestled with Steve Mocco, and Dórea later joined that camp.

Alistair Overeem, Who’s Who number 2 stopped him in the second round in December 2015. He beat Ben Rothwell in Zagreb in April 2016, then lost a title rematch to Miocic in the first round at UFC 211 in Dallas on 13 May 2017. He came back with wins over Blagoy Ivanov, Tai Tuivasa in Adelaide and Derrick Lewis in Wichita in March 2019.

A hard run and life after the UFC 2019 to 2026

On 29 June 2019 Francis Ngannou, Who’s Who number 5 stopped him in 71 seconds. Losses to Curtis Blaydes, Jairzinho Rozenstruik and Ciryl Gane followed, four straight stoppage losses, and the UFC released him in March 2021. Dana White said they parted on friendly terms.

He kept fighting. After a loss to Yorgan De Castro at Eagle FC 47 in 2022, he joined Gamebred Bareknuckle MMA, the promotion run by Jorge Masvidal, Who’s Who number 22. He beat Werdum again by split decision in September 2023, and on 2 March 2024 he stopped Alan Belcher in the second round to become the promotion’s first heavyweight champion. On 16 May 2026 he fought on MVP MMA 1 at the Intuit Dome, a card headlined by Ronda Rousey, Who’s Who number 8, and was knocked out in the first round by Robelis Despaigne.

Style, technique and the corner

How he fights

He fought as a boxer in a heavyweight’s body. UFC.com described his classic set-up in 2011, legs wide and body nearly side-on, and called him “probably the best boxer in the heavyweight division”. His jab set up the right uppercut, his main weapon, thrown off the jab, off a left hook or as a lead. Opponents compared that uppercut to that of Mike Tyson, Who’s Who number 34 in · Ultimate Boxing Reunion. The overhand right finished Velasquez in 2011 and dropped Hunt in 2013, and the counter left hook put Miocic down in 2014. Dórea rated his movement better than most heavyweights, and Ngannou said before their fight that he moved a lot. His weakness was sustained wrestling pressure, which Velasquez used to beat him twice.

Teams and gyms

Yuri Carlton gave him his first MMA classes in Salvador. Luiz Carlos Dórea, at Academia Champion in Bahia, was his boxing coach from 2006. He camped at Nova União in Rio de Janeiro before the 2014 Miocic fight, then joined American Top Team in Florida.

Stories people still tell

1. The nickname.

   “Cigano” means gypsy in Portuguese. It came from his long hair and a character in a 1990s telenovela, Explode Coração. He didn’t like it at first. “The less you like a nickname, the more it sticks,” he said.

2. His hero.

   The fighter he looked up to was Antônio Rodrigo “Minotauro” Nogueira, twin brother of Rogério Nogueira, Who’s Who number 24.

3. The kid who studied him.

   Francis Ngannou said that when he started in MMA he learned by watching fights online, and dos Santos was one of the heavyweights he watched.

Legacy

He broke through as a heavy underdog in 2008, won the title in 64 seconds in 2011 and held the UFC heavyweight win-streak record. Miocic said of their 2014 fight, “I’m at where I’m at because of that fight.” Dana White called him “one of the nicest human beings in the sport”.