Leo Vieira is one of the most successful Jiu-Jitsu competitors of his generation, and he was trained by the legendary Romero ‘Jacare’ Cavalcanti. He’s a two-time ADCC world champion and an IBJJF world champion who has inspired thousands of grapplers across the world to try and emulate his success in the decades that have followed. His status in the sport has even given him some fantastic opportunities, like being named as the ONE Championship Vice President of Grappling. He recently opened up about what his childhood was like before he ever found Jiu-Jitsu:
“Before Jiu-Jitsu I was struggling to find myself because when I go to my place that I live, my friends sometimes… the joke was ‘you’re not rich enough’ but then the other group is all ‘you’re not poor enough’ because you live in this place.”
As Leo Vieira explained though, training Jiu-Jitsu under Romero ‘Jacare’ Cavalcanti at the age of 6 changed all of that:
“When I was going to the school training Jiu-Jitsu, everybody was the same. Everybody with the same gi, different belt. People (don’t) put yourself as a different social (class), how much money you have, what colour your skin (is), what religion you are… It’s just like, let’s train Jiu-Jitsu. That’s why the community that I fitted was Jiu-Jitsu and this gives me so much confidence in Jiu-Jitsu. And I think this confidence (came) because every day you win and you lose. Every day you win and you lose, every spar you win the spar, every spar sometimes you lose. So winning, losing, winning, losing. You deal with loss and wins every day, so this gave me confidence enough to be myself as a kid.”
While Leo Vieira could have gotten the benefits of training Jiu-Jitsu from hundreds of black belts around the world back then, he found something special with Romero ‘Jacare’ Cavalvanti. Jacare was busy building some incredible grapplers back then, and he went on to have a hand in developing some of the biggest names in the sport like Marcelo Garcia and Fabio Gurgel. Vieira also explained where he thought that success came from:
“I was very blessed and lucky to (have) Romero (‘Jacare’ Cavalcanti) as a professor.. You as a kid, you only figure out some stuff as you get more maturity and you can see the situation from a different perspective. After I grew up, after I became coach, after I have (a higher) position in my team… I can see how he was very smart. How he was very important, not to me but to a lot of people… His education is in physical education so you can see he was using the concept of his knowledge in the school, his education, to develop his athletes.”
The full interview with Leo Vieira where he discusses his introduction to Jiu-Jitsu and his time learning from Romero ‘Jacare’ Cavalcanti was uploaded to the official YouTube channel of Fight Untold:
