{"id":38750,"date":"2026-06-10T14:57:26","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T14:57:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sherdog.com\/news\/news\/Vitor-Shaolin-The-referee-can-shorten-a-fighters-career-from-10-to-2-years-201484"},"modified":"2026-06-10T14:57:26","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T14:57:26","slug":"vitor-shaolin-the-referee-can-shorten-a-fighters-career-from-10-to-2-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.martialartskleinanzeigen.com\/videos\/vitor-shaolin-the-referee-can-shorten-a-fighters-career-from-10-to-2-years\/","title":{"rendered":"Vitor Shaolin: \u2018The referee can shorten a fighter’s career from 10 to 2 years\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
<\/div>\n

Brazilian fans have always lamented the disproportion between the
\nnumber of Brazilian fighters and Brazilian referees in the
\nUltimate Fighting Championship<\/a>. Even though Brazil has the
\nsecond most athletes on the promotion\u2019s roster, behind only the
\nUnited States, after Mario Yamasaki withdrew from refereeing panels
\nthere was a period of several years during which no Brazilian
\nreferees were being used by American athletic commissions.<\/p>\n

\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

That changed in 2024 when former Shooto<\/a> and
\nCage
\nRage<\/a> champion, Vitor \u201cShaolin\u201d
\nRibeiro<\/a>, began to get the call more frequently. Thanks to his
\nexcellent performances and high accuracy, the black belt under
\nAndre
\nPederneiras<\/a> was chosen to referee the title fight between
\nJoshua
\nVan<\/a> and Tatsuro
\nTaira<\/a> in the co-main event of UFC 328.<\/p>\n

In an interview with Sherdog a month after the fight, Ribeiro
\ncommented on his decision to stop the fight at 1 minute and 32
\nseconds of the fifth round, giving the TKO win to Van. \u201cIt was a
\nvery good fight to referee where both had good moments until the
\nfourth round, but when Taira took a sequence of 14 punches without
\nreturning any, I had no alternative but to stop it. Enough is
\nenough,\u201d analyzed the Brazilian, revealing that despite receiving
\nsome criticism, he remains fully convinced that he made the right
\ndecision. \u201cI wasn’t going to let him fall unconscious with his face
\non the canvas by one more punch. The Japanese fighter is extremely
\ntough mentally and didn’t want to give up, but as a referee I had
\nto fulfill my role. It’s actions like this that can reduce a 10-or
\n15-year career to two years. A series of concussions can totally
\nchange the course of a career. Today the sport has betting and a
\nlot involved so it\u2019s natural to see more people complaining, but
\nthe referee is there to preserve the physical integrity of those
\nwho put on the show,\u201d Shaolin stated.<\/p>\n

As a four-time Brazilian jiu-jitsu world champion with a 20-5 MMA
\nrecord, having won two of the world’s most important lightweight
\ntitles of his era, Ribeiro emphasizes the importance of the referee
\npreserving the athlete’s integrity, drawing a parallel between
\nTaira and Van and his fight with Gesias
\nCavalcante<\/a> at K-1 Heroes in 2007. \u201cLike Taira, 20 years ago I
\nhad that old-school mentality of fighting to the death and never
\ngiving up. I took a very strong punch from Gesias that injured my
\neye (suffered retinal detachment), today I thank the referee for
\nstopping it because my mentality was to fight to the death, just
\nlike Taira.\u201d<\/p>\n

The first MMA world champion from Nova Uniao, \u201cShaolin\u201d also
\nrevealed to Sherdog that he played an important role in the early
\ncareer of a talented boy from Amazonas who slept on the Nova Uniao
\nmats and helped him a lot in his training to win the Cage Rage
\nbelt: Jose
\nAldo<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 2005, I had left Shooto and was fighting at Cage Rage in
\nEngland, and the event offered two air tickets,\u201d Ribeiro said. \u201cOne
\nfor sure was for [Andre] Pederneiras, so we had the idea of giving
\nthe other to \u2018Junior\u2019 [Aldo], who needed to implement his Sherdog
\naccount so \u201cDede\u201d could take him abroad. After my fight, he stayed
\nanother month at my agent Alex’s house, who arranged two fights for
\nhim in local events (UK Fight Night and Battle of Britain). Aldo
\nknocked both opponents out quickly, and it became easier for Dede
\nto sell him to Pancrase and then WEC. I\u2019m so proud to have helped
\nhim in the beginning, Junior is such a wonderful and talented
\nguy\u201d<\/p>\n

Living in New York since 2008, \u201cShaolin\u201d now divides his routine
\nbetween jiu-jitsu classes at his academy in New Jersey and MMA
\nrefereeing. The Brazilian started refereeing amateur fights in 2014
\nand soon after was credentialed by the New York State Athletic
\nCommission. Today, Ribeiro
\nhas already refereed nearly 200 fights, according to his Sherdog
\nreferee profile.<\/a><\/p>\n

“My life has been dedicated to jiu-jitsu and then to MMA,” he said, “and I am extremely happy to be able to give back to the sport
\neverything I received from it, whether by teaching my art or
\nrefereeing in MMA.” <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Brazilian fans have always lamented the disproportion between the number of Brazilian fighters and Brazilian referees in the Ultimate Fighting Championship. Even though Brazil has the second most athletes on the promotion\u2019s roster, behind only the United States, after Mario Yamasaki withdrew from refereeing panels there was a period of several years during which no […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38751,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[150],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-martial-arts-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.martialartskleinanzeigen.com\/videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.martialartskleinanzeigen.com\/videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.martialartskleinanzeigen.com\/videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.martialartskleinanzeigen.com\/videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.martialartskleinanzeigen.com\/videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38750"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.martialartskleinanzeigen.com\/videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38750\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.martialartskleinanzeigen.com\/videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.martialartskleinanzeigen.com\/videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.martialartskleinanzeigen.com\/videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.martialartskleinanzeigen.com\/videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}