Pentagon Combat: The Riot that Got MMA Banned in Rio and Inspired ADCC

Last month, an awestruck martial arts world watched the biggest grappling event in the history of the sport. The incredible production of the 2022 Abu Dhabi Combat Club Submission Fighting World Championship reminded older fans of Pride Fighting Championships, whose stateside debut, Pride 32, and antepenultimate numbered show, Pride 33, coincidentally took place in the same Thomas and Mack Center in Las Vegas, Nevada, a decade and a half before.

What many people may not know is that the idea to create the “Grappling Olympics” sprang from the failure of Pentagon Combat, a 1997 no-holds-barred event that ended in a riot and led to the sport being banned in Rio de Janeiro for three years. In this report, I recall that infamous event and how it directly impacted the creation of ADCC, 24 years ago.

A Mysterious Pupil

In 1988, Nelson Monteiro, a coral belt under Gracie Barra founder Carlos Gracie Jr., moved to San Diego, Calif., where he started teaching Brazilian jiu-jitsu in his garage but soon opened his own gym. Shortly after Royce Gracie won the first Ultimate Fighting Championship in 1993, a young Arab graduate student named Tahnoon Bin Zayed decided to take a week of classes from Monteiro.

“Tahnoon arrived with his secretary, the Englishman Guy Nievens, and initially introduced himself as ‘Ben,’” recalls Monteiro, who took Nievens for the boss and assumed that “Ben” was Nievens’ assistant, rather than the other way around. Monteiro only learned his student’s true identity when, after completing his university work, Sheik Tahnoon made a stunning proposal: that Monteiro return with him to the United Arab Emirates, and start teaching jiu-jitsu—at his palace.

“I’ll never forget the day that ‘Ben’ came to me, revealed who he was and invited me to move to Abu Dhabi. I was in love with the lifestyle here in San Diego, my gym was doing really well, but the proposal was undeniable. To make it even more difficult to say no, Tahnoon offered me plane tickets to anywhere in the world every three months,” recalls Monteiro, who moved to Abu Dhabi and started to give private classes to Tahnoon.

After a few months of classes, Tahnoon, passionate about the UFC, had the idea of staging a similar event in his country. “His father didn't like the idea because he thought the NHB was too violent and didn't want the UAE to be associated with it, so I suggested we do the event in Rio, birthplace of vale tudo. He loved the idea and that's how Pentagon Combat was born,” explained Monteiro.

Perhaps because Monteiro had been living outside Brazil since 1988, without having experienced the historic Vale-Tudo do Grajau in 1991, which further intensified the animosity between jiu-jitsu and luta-livre, he imagined that the rivalry between the two was over. Thus he decided to accept the idea of Gracie Barra’s friends to put Renzo Gracie up against Eugenio Tadeu, luta-livre’s top icon. It turned out to be a very risky bet.

Aside from that (almost literally) explosive main-event matchup, however, it must be recognized that Monteiro put together a show that lived up to Tahnoon’s aspirations. On that day, Sept. 27, 1997, Pentagon Combat graced the great mecca of jiu-jitsu events, the Tijuca Tenis Clube gym, with great names like Oleg Taktarov, Murilo Bustamante, Jerry Bohlander, Sean Alvarez, Marcelo “Tigre” Eneas Dantas and Ricardo Morais.

Taktarov TKOs Alvarez in 52 Seconds

A year after being knocked out with an upkick by Renzo Gracie in Alabama, Taktarov came to Brazil to fight Sean Alvarez, a Monteiro purple belt and close friend of Sheik Tahnoon who had debuted in Japan the previous year, beating Yoji Anjo. With 17 fights on his resume, including names like Marco Ruas, Dan Severn, Shamrock and Renzo himself, the Russian knew that Alvarez would try to grab him, but he didn't even have time to try. Taktarov met Alvarez’s first grappling attempt with an accurate hook that put the big man down. “The Russian Bear” then closed out the fight with a deadly sequence of crosses and straights at 52 seconds of the first round.

It was not the fastest knockout of the night; Alvarez’s training partner, 6-foot-8, 290-pound giant Ricardo Morais, needed only 17 seconds to knock out Sergio Muralha. And in Pentagon Combat’s most violent fight, Marcelo “Tigre,” after being ground-and-pounded from the guard for almost five minutes, managed to sweep, mount, take the back and submit Jalmir “Buda” Ferreira with a rear-naked choke.

Bustamante vs. Bohlander

Jerry Bohlander’s controversial victory over Fabio Gurgel at UFC 11 made his matchup with Murilo Bustamante the most anticipated of the night. As expected, the fight was very technical with both trying to take the other down, until in an exchange against the fence, Bustamante managed to reach Bohlander’s back, taking the American down as he did. The Lion’s Den fighter got back to his feet, which is when Bustamante lured the American to his open guard, controlled his wrists and surprised him with a upkick (similar to what Renzo had done with Taktarov the year before) knocking out Jerry at 5 minutes, 38 seconds. “Murilo taught me a lot today. I think the UFC should have a 90kg tournament to decide who is the best in the world. Me, [Eugene] Jackson, Bustamante and Gurgel,” Bohlander told me after the fight.

Tadeu vs. Gracie: Luta-Livre Gets Revenge

There is a popular saying in Brazil: “The one who hits forgets, but the one who gets hit doesn’t.” That proverb fits perfectly the powder keg that was Pentagon Combat. For everything they went through in and out of the ring on jiu-jitsu’s night of triumph at Grajau in 1991, it was obvious that luta-livre would not pass up a chance for revenge at Tijuca Tenis Clube, six years later. Putting a member of the Gracie family to face the biggest leader of luta-livre, a man who had fought at almost every major confrontation between the two styles, without an absurd level of added security apparatus, was a tragedy foretold.

“It was our payback for Grajau. The day before, I tried to get some tickets with Robson Gracie, but he only gave me three, so I got angry. I organized an army of 100 luta-livre psychopaths and we invaded Tijuca Tenis Clube Gymnasium, we showed them how difficult it is to fight under pressure,” luta-livre general Hugo Duarte told me the day after the event, explaining the invasion of Tadeu’s fans two hours before the gym’s gates opened for Pentagon Combat.

Gracie was 6 kilograms (13.2 pounds) heavier than Tadeu and was considered the favorite, having defeated much larger opponents such as Taktarov and Maurice Smith. In the early minutes of the fight, he gave the luta-livre black belt a hard time, passing his guard several times, achieving twice and nearly submitting him with a rear-naked choke. Tadeu, showing his incredible heart and supported by the loud cheering of the luta-livre faction, defended every attempt. Eventually, Gracie began to tire while Tadeu seemed to grow stronger. After dropping Gracie with a low kick, Eugenio started kicking the legs of his grounded foe, who simply tried to recover while on the floor. Gracie tried to get up again, but Tadeu put him down again with another kick to the legs. Feeling the moment, the luta-livre crowd went crazy and swarmed into the area around the cage. The situation spun out of control when a luta-livre representative kicked Gracie’s head through the fence and the fight was stopped with just one minute to go in the 10-minute first round.

The very tired Gracie got up and started walking around the cage when another luta-livre representative reached over the top of the cage and punched him. At that moment, the lights in the gym went off and a general riot erupted between members of luta-livre and jiu-jitsu, with hurled chairs flying. “I had never seen anything like it in my life. It felt like a real war,” declared a distraught Taktarov, who had finished his fight with Alvarez just minutes earlier.

Police on the scene were completely lost in the middle of the battle in the darkness. Photographers and journalists—myself included—hid under the cage. To make matters worse, an unprepared policeman thought that firing his gun in the dark gym would end the confusion; the effect was the opposite.

“The guy who attacked Renzo was an idiot. I was so close to knocking out the Gracie and luta-livre would finally get their revenge,” an angry Tadeu complained later. Duarte believed that Robson Gracie had been responsible for the blackout: “Why weren't the lights turned off at first when Renzo was winning?” argued the luta-livre head man. Renzo replied, “My dad was in the ring with me when the chairs started being thrown into the ring. How could he have turned off the light?”

Tahnoon Learns about the Riot on CNN

The next day, all the Brazilian press reported on the fiasco. Even CNN international showed images of the “Brazilian Riot in a NHB event,” and it was through a CNN report that the event’s own patron, Sheik Tahnoon, learned of what had happened. The consequences could not have been worse; after Pentagon Combat, the mayor of Rio de Janeiro banned vale tudo events in the city.

However, it was his enormous frustration with the Pentagon’s failure that led Tahnoon to want to create an event that would unify the rules of grappling, allowing all styles to face each other. “As soon as I returned to Abu Dhabi, Tahnoon started to talk about the idea to unite grappling styles under the same rules,” Monteiro.

The first Abu Dhabi Combat Club tournament took place less than one year after Pentagon, with only a select group of invited athletes. The event’s success led Tahnoon to invest more than $1 million in the second ADCC, bringing more than 80 grapplers from all over the world to Abu Dhabi in 1999. The even greater success of the second edition turned the ADCC into the de facto world cup of grappling. The event was held annually until 2001, when it began to be held every two years. Today, 24 years after the first edition and especially after this historic 14th edition in Las Vegas with the presence of 14 greatest champions in the history of the event who were inducted into a ADCC Hall of Fame, there is no doubt that ADCC is recognized today as the “Olympics of Grappling.”