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Johil de Oliveira

Johil de Oliveira is an unsung MMA legend: A Luta Livre fighter who became one of the sport's first standouts at lighter weights, winning multiple vale tudo tournaments in Brazil and becoming the first man to beat Pele Landi-Jons, at the time one of the two consensus top fighters at the class (the other being Pat Miletich). Johil entered Pride 9 to fight Matt Serra as a massive favorite.

The fight never started. While walking down the entrance ramp a subset of pyrotechnics ignited at the wrong time, setting Johil ablaze and sending him to the hospital with burns across 70% of his body. He refused to sue, as Pride said they would take care of him with both money for his pain and a fight contract that would give him time to recover and three easy fights to come back to. The money wound up being a total of $70,000, the recovery time was about five months, and the three easy fights were against the 8-3 future UFC champion Carlos Newton, the debuting jiu-jitsu ace Nino Schembri, and--in what was, in fairness, an easier fight on paper--the low-ranked but canny grappler Daiju Takase. Johil put up solid contests but lost all three, and would go most of a decade without a victory at all: He entered 1999 at 12-2-1 and by 2007 he was 12-11-1.

It was a lot of things, in the end. His injuries from the fire plagued him, he got into a car accident before the Newton fight that left him partially blind, his knees were shot from years of combat sports, the accident left him so anxious about fighting that he recalls his coaches had to physically push him to the ring on several occasions. He famously made a post-accident ringwalk clutching a fire extinguisher, an act of defiance the crowd loved so much that it earned him the nickname The Fire Samurai--when, to his admission, holding the extinguisher made him feel safe enough to walk to the ring under his own power.

After returning to Brazil, Johil eventually put his career back together. He kept fighting through 2012, and while his mileage meant he was never a top-level competitor again, he found enough of his old spirit to claw out more victories. He retired at 17-15-1-1 and still teaches at his MMA school today.

Moveset, stats, logic and four attires (Pride 12 vs Newton / UVF 1 vs Nagase / IVC 2 vs Bosco / Shooto Brazil 25 vs Bunn). His fight shorts have the signature blue stripes on the side, the blue background is just real bad for making that visible.