Evangelista Santos, who is now retired, was a professional MMA fighter from 1997 to 2016. He fought for Strikeforce, Bellator MMA, the PRIDE Fighting Championships, Cage Rage, the International Vale Tudo Championships, Pancrase, Jungle Fight, Legacy FC, and World Victory Road.
His style of fighting was very dynamic, and 24 of his 39 fights ended in knockouts. He fought in his first PRIDE FC match in Japan, but he lost to keylock expert Kazuhiro Nakamura.
The 44-year-old also fought Melvin Manhoef again on April 28, 2014, in a rematch from 2006. Manhoef beat Santos again in the first round. The last time they played, Santos was eliminated by Manhoef.
What happened to Evangelista Santos?
After he stopped fighting, the MMA fighter worked as a coach for a year in Curitiba, Brazil. He also moved back to the U.S. in 2018, and he now works as a coach at his gym in Texas.
He even said very clearly that he didn’t want to compete again. After his fight with Michael “Venom” Page, in which he broke his skull with a flying knee, he decided to stop fighting.
The hard blow broke his skull, which was a terrible injury that had to be fixed with surgery. Santos decided to put his gloves away, even though his surgery hadn’t left him with any major problems. He didn’t want to risk getting hurt again.
Cris Cyborg’s husband, Evangelista Santos, was well-known by the name Cyborg when he was in the MMA.
Cristiane Justino Venancio, who used to be married to Evangelista and goes by the ring name Cris Cyborg, is also an MMA fighter. Since the beginning of 2020, she has been the Bellator Women’s Featherweight Champion.
In a similar way, she has been the World Featherweight Champion in the UFC, Strikeforce, and Invicta FC.
Cris has also won world titles in four major mixed martial arts competitions. This makes her the first fighter in the history of MMA, male or female, to win the Grand Slam.
She is also thought to be one of the best women in mixed martial arts history.
At the Fight Music Show on September 25, 2022, Cyborg will box for the first time as a professional against Simone Silva, who was the Brazilian National Boxing Champion.
She works with Justin Wren’s charity, Fight For The Forgotten, which digs wells so that Ugandan Pygmies can get clean water. Also, Rubens “Cobrinha” Charles gave her her BJJ Belt after she won her first submission fight in her 26-fight MMA career.
A Brazilian MMA fighter has been married to Cris Cyborg for six years
Cris Cyborg was Evangelista’s first wife. They were married in 2005, when they were both 28 years old. When they got married, the former couple were pretty much years apart in age.
When they got married, Cris started calling herself “cyborg.” But, after six years of marriage, they decided to split up in December 2011.
Even though Evangelista and Cris were no longer together, they still respected and cared for each other. Cris had sent Evangelista a message on her Instagram page with a photo of her ex-husband and a scan of Santos’ broken skull.
In 2017, she also told the world that she was getting married to Ray Elbe, her longtime partner and a former MMA fighter.
Years after getting engaged, she legally adopted her teenage niece, becoming the first mom in UFC history to hold the championship belt.
Last year, Evangelista and his girlfriend Denise Rutkowski came clean about their relationship
From the photos on his Instagram page, it looks like Santos has met someone new. He is seeing Denise Rutkowski, who is his girlfriend. In a way, their relationship got its start on Instagram last year.
Also, his current partner is a fashion designer, according to her Instagram bio. It also looks like she is a Brazilian lawyer who is completely in love with life.
Her Instagram is set to private, and there are more than 200 posts on it. On the other hand, the MMA fighter has only shared two photo collages of the couple, both of which show them giving each other a fiery kiss.
Only in August and September of 2021 were the pictures posted. From the photo, it looks like Denise and Evangelista are quite a few years apart in age. In fact, Denise looks like she is in her 30s, but she is actually 44 years old.
Background
Santos was born and raised in the city of Rondonopolis. He did not have a very safe childhood. When he was 12, he was introduced to cockfighting, which was popular in Brazil but not yet illegal. After five more years of training and taking care of fighting roosters, he started training in kickboxing, which led him to vale tudo when he was 18. Santos was also the Muay Thai national champion of Brazil four times.
Start of a job
Santos turned pro when he was 20 years old. He started his career with a record of 2-0 before fighting legendary Brazilian fighter Jose “Pele” Landi-Jons and losing by technical knockout. Santos won his first two fights with the British Cage Rage organization before going back to Brazil’s Jungle Fight. He beat future KSW Middleweight Champion Michal Materla by knockout, which is Materla’s only knockout loss so far in his career. Then, Santos fought Melvin “No Mercy” Manhoef, a Dutch kickboxer, for the Cage Rage World Light Heavyweight Championship. They traded punches in a very entertaining fight, but Santos was knocked out and lost in the end. Before he made his PRIDE FC debut, Santos won his next two fights, including one over Francis Carmont, who later became a UFC veteran.
PRIDE Championships of Fighting
Santos’s first fight in Japan’s PRIDE FC was against submission expert Kazuhiro Nakamura, and he lost by a keylock submission. His next fight with the Japanese group was against Yosuke Nishijima, a professional boxer from Japan. Santos won by submitting Nishijima with a rear-naked choke.
Road to World Victory
Santos fought James Zikic again for the Cage Rage World Light Heavyweight Championship, but he lost by a unanimous vote. Santos’s next fight was against the Armenian superstar Gegard Mousasi, and he lost by TKO. His first fight in World Victory Road Presents: Sengoku Raiden Championships was against Makoto Takimoto, and he beat him with an achilles lock. Santos fought once more for a Japanese organization, this time against Siyar Bahadurzada, who later became a UFC veteran. Santos lost by TKO after hurting his arm.
Santos made his Strikeforce debut on June 19, 2009. He was the main attraction at the Strikeforce Challengers: Villasenor vs. Cyborg event, but he lost to former King of the Cage Middleweight Champion Joey Villasenor by a split decision. In his next match, he fought Marius Zaromskis, who was fighting Nick Diaz for the open Strikeforce Welterweight Title, and beat him.
Nick Diaz was the Strikeforce Welterweight Champion. On January 29, 2011, at the HP Pavilion in San Jose, California, Santos challenged Diaz for the title. In the second round, an armbar put him out of the fight.
At Strikeforce: Fedor vs. Henderson, Santos was supposed to fight Paul Daley, but he had to pull out because he hurt his shoulder.
On September 10, 2011, at Strikeforce World Grand Prix: Barnett vs. Kharitonov, Santos fought Jordan Mein, who was making his first fight for Strikeforce. After a tough back-and-forth fight, Mein knocked out “Cyborg” with elbows in the third round. This was “Cyborg’s” second loss in a row, and Santos’s fourth loss in his last six fights.
After a long time of not fighting, Santos asked to be let go from Strikeforce so he could fight more often. He got what he wanted.
Championship of Legacy Fighting
At Legacy Fighting Championship 17, which was to take place on February 1, 2013, Santos was supposed to fight Pete Spratt.
[4] But Santos got hurt and had to pull out of the fight, so Dan Hornbuckle took his place.
After being away from the sport for almost two years,[6] Santos came back on January 22, 2016, to fight Artenas Young in the main event of Legacy Fighting Championship 50. Everyone agreed that he won the fight.
The Gringo Super Fight
On April 28, 2014, Santos made his GSF debut against Melvin Manhoef in a rematch from 2006. In their first fight, Manhoef knocked out Santos. In their second fight, Manhoef knocked out Santos in the first round. Shortly after the fight, Santos said he was giving up fighting.
Bellator MMA
On March 1, 2016, Bellator MMA said that Santos had signed a contract for more than one fight.
On April 22, Santos made his organization debut in a welterweight fight on the main card of Bellator 153. He beat Brennan Ward by submission in the first round.
Santos decided quickly to fight Saad Awad at Bellator 154 on May 14, 2016, but he lost.
On July 16, 2016, Santos fought Michael “Venom” Page. Page knocked him out with a flying knee, which broke Santos’ frontal sinus.
In January 2017, Santos left his job. He was a coach in Curitiba, Brazil, for a year. He went back to the U.S. at the beginning of 2018 and is now a coach in his own gym in Texas. In August 2018, Santos said that he did not plan to compete again.
In 2016, Evangelista Santos got a knee to the head so hard that it left a mark on his forehead. But Santos’s career has been about a lot more than just that one moment.
First of all, he began fighting in 1997 and kept doing it for the next 19 years
Evangelista has also fought for a number of other top organizations, such as Strikeforce, Bellator, and Pride. He also had a lot of title fights during his career.
But Evangelista Santos is so much more than just a professional MMA fighter. So, read more about his life in this article.
Here, we talk about Evangelista’s early life, his age, his physical stats, his career, his net worth, his injury, his personal life, and many other things.
Where did Evangelista Santos get their start? Family & Early Life
On December 12, 1977, Evangelista Santos was born in Rondonopolis, Brazil. At this point, we still don’t know much about his parents.
In the same way, no one knows where his other siblings are.
When asked about his childhood, Evangelista said that he grew up in a rough neighborhood.
Santos was introduced to cockfighting when he was 12 years old. This is an illegal sport where people bet money on which of the two roosters will win.
After that, he took care of the best fighters for another five years before starting his own career as a fighter. Evangelista started out by learning kickboxing.
But Santos moved to Vale Tudo when he was 18 years old
How old is Evangelista Santos? Age, body measurements, and country of origin
Santos was born in 1977, which makes him 44 years old right now. In the same way, he has a birthday on December 12th.
So, he has the star sign of Sagittarius, which means he is outgoing, optimistic, and enthusiastic, among other things.
When it comes to how tall he is, Evangelista is 5 feet 10 inches (1.78 m) tall and weighs 176 lb (80 kg). During his career, he also fought in the divisions for light heavyweight, middleweight, and welterweight.
Santos is Brazilian because he was born in Rondonpolis, which is the third-largest city in the state of Mato Grosso. Since Mato Grosso is in Brazil, this means that Evangelista is a Brazilian.
Evangelista Santos MMA Career
After training for two years, Evangelista started working as a professional at the age of 20. After that, he won his first two fights before facing Jose “Pele” Landi-Jons, a famous Brazilian fighter, at BVF 8.
But, unfortunately, Santos lost the fight when he was knocked out in the first eight minutes.
After that, he fought 16 more times and had a record of 12 wins and 7 losses before he got his first shot at the title.
To be clear, at Cage Rage 15, Evangelista fought Melvin Manhoef. He lost the fight by Knock Out in the second round, which was a shame.
After that, his next championship fight was at Cage Rage 21, which was a year later. For the Cage Rage Light Heavyweight Championship, he fought James Zikic.
Even though Santos was feeling good after winning the last fight, he made a mistake when he was under pressure and lost the five-round fight.
After that, Evangelista fought in many top MMA organizations, such as PRIDE FC, Strikeforce, and Bellator MMA, to name a few.
During that time, he went from being a light heavyweight to a middleweight at first. But in 2009, just one year later, Santos moved back down to welterweight.
Evangelista also fought Nick Diaz for the Strikeforce Welterweight Championship and lost.
In the same way, when he fought Melvin Manhoef for the vacant Gringo Super Fight Welterweight Championship, it was one of the worst fights of his career.
To explain, Santos was knocked out in the first round, at 46 seconds. The Brazilian then went on to fight three more times before his famous loss to Michael Page in 2016.