Fabricio Werdum Reveals UFC 198 Strategy: ‘45 thousand Werdums’

Fabricio Werdum felt the support of his fellow Brazilians one week before his scheduled defense of the Ultimate Fighting Championship heavyweight title. “Vai Cavalo” participated in a seminar promoted by friend, former Chute Boxe rep and current Black Belt MMA School frontman Marlon Mathias on May 7. Werdum will put his championship on the line against Stipe Miocic in the UFC 198 main event this Saturday in Curitiba, Brazil.

Werdum and Kings MMA trainer Rafael Cordeiro shared their knowledge with 440 students at the seminar and finally revealed the secret “of 45 thousand Werdums.” when he asked the students to use a “happy face mask.”

“It was cool to see 440 happy faces. Imagine next Saturday... It will be 100 times more. As I said, Miocic will fight 45 thousand Werdums.”

“It was definitely the biggest seminar ever in Curitiba,” Mathias said. “Besides people from all three states in southern Brazil, there were students from Paraguay and Colombia. There were so many people that we had to move it to a public facility. Rafael taught MMA and muay Thai, and Werdum taught jiu-jitsu and got the students going with his jokes and charisma.”

Curitiba has more MMA teams -- at least 10 of them -- than any other city in Brazil. While there are rivalries among the teams, the popularity of Werdum and Cordeiro attracted students from all the academies and forced them to put their differences aside.

“I knew they were popular here, but I didn’t expect that many people,” Mathias said. “Curitiba is breathing MMA. Wherever you go, people just talk about [UFC 198]. The UFC fans can definitely expect a historical event in the land of MMA.”