Luís Duarte
“Bebeo”
Source: graciemag.comSilver medalist at the first World Championship and a founder of Brazilian Top Team, who wrote down the Carlson Gracie camps from inside them.
Biography
Sources for this profile
Wikipedia, "1996 World Jiu-Jitsu Championship", medallists table.(opens in a new tab)
He took silver in the black-belt medium-heavyweight division (88.3 kg) at the 1996 World Jiu-Jitsu Championship, the first edition of the tournament, competing for Carlson Gracie. The gold went to Roberto Magalhaes of Gracie Barra.
Where in the source: Medallists table, row "Medium-heavyweight (88.3 kg)", under the column heading "Silver": "Luis Roberto Duarte" with "Carlson Gracie" beneath the name.
Accessed:
Portal do Vale Tudo, "25 anos do 1o Mundial: A grande revolucao do Jiu-Jitsu", 28 January 2021.(opens in a new tab)
In that 1996 medium-heavyweight bracket at the Tijuca Tenis Clube he beat Ricardo Americano in one semi-final. The other semi-final sent through Roberto "Roleta" Magalhaes, who had been promoted to black belt days before the tournament and who won the final against him by triangle choke.
Where in the source: Section "ROLETA PEGA A PRETA PARA SURPREENDER WALLID": "finalizar com um triângulo outro representante da Carlson, Bebeo Duarte, que havia eliminado Ricardo Americano na outra semifinal".
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The same retrospective groups him with Mario Sperry, Ricardo Liborio, Amaury Bitetti and Wallid Ismail as Carlson Gracie's front rank at that championship.
Where in the source: Photo caption: "tropa de elite da Carlson: Zé Mário, Liborio, Amaury, Bebeo e Wallid".
Accessed:
Strictly Fighters, "ADCC All The Results", division results for ADCC 1999.(opens in a new tab)
He finished fourth in the over-99 kg division at the 1999 ADCC World Championship in Abu Dhabi on 24 February 1999, behind Mark Kerr, Sean Alvarez and Chris Haseman.
Where in the source: Under the heading "The second ADCC was in Abu Dhabi on February 24th 1999", the division block reading "+99kg 1st Mark Kerr 2nd Sean Alvarez 3rd Chris Haseman 4th Luis Roberto Duarte".
Accessed:
Portal do Vale Tudo, "ADCC 1999: Brasil leva 50% dos ouros na edicao que consagrou as olimpiadas da luta agarrada", 25 November 2020.(opens in a new tab)
He was one of seven Brazilians in the sixteen-man absolute bracket at that same championship, alongside Roberto Traven, Murilo Bustamante, Fabiano Capoani, Luis Brito, Vinicius "Draculino" Magalhaes and Pedro Duarte. The absolute carried the largest purse of the event and its sixteen places were normally filled by picking out the standouts of each weight division.
Where in the source: Section on the absolute: "Sete no total (Traven, Bustamante, Bebeo, Capoane, Luis Brito, Draculino e Pedro Duarte)".
Accessed:
Brazilian Top Team blog, post of 26 November 2007, archived copy.(opens in a new tab)
Writing on the Brazilian Top Team blog in 2007, he placed the preparation for the 1991 jiu-jitsu against luta livre challenge at Carlson Gracie's academy on rua Silva Castro in Rio de Janeiro. By his account the challenge came from the luta livre side, was accepted, and those who ran jiu-jitsu agreed that Carlson would train the men chosen for it.
Where in the source: Post "Escrito em:26/11/2007": "na academia Carlson Gracie, na rua silva castro que nos preparamos".
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He named the four chosen for that challenge as Wallid Ismail, Fabio Gurgel, Murilo Bustamante and Marcelo Behring, against Eugenio Tadeu, Marcelo Mendes, Hugo Duarte and Denilson; the pairings he gives in the same post do not follow the order of either list. He also recorded that Behring dropped out during training with an elbow problem, that Amaury Bitetti was brought in to replace him and was himself unable to take part, and that Carlson refused to use anyone else from the training group although men there were ready to step in, because they were not black belts: in his telling, Carlson held that only black belts were fully prepared to represent jiu-jitsu.
Where in the source: Post "Escrito em:27/11/2007": "problema que foi resolvido com a inclusão do atleta Amaury Bitetti"; "tínhamos atletas treinando , todos com condições de substituir dessa vez o Amaury"; and "não foi permitido pelo Carlson pois não éramos faixas preta".
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He described the 1991 camp as a rare truce, a time when it made no difference which academy a man came from because they were all in it together, and he placed himself among the handful closest to the daily training. The group had turned into something like an elite unit, he wrote, and nobody in it could hide how glad they were to be part of something that might redirect the sport in Brazil.
Where in the source: Post "Escrito em:27/11/2007": "formamos uma espécie de “tropa de elite” todos que estavam mais próximos , ali no dia a dia dos treinamentos ( meu caso especifico)".
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As an example of how far that truce went, he listed a session that would have been unthinkable in normal times: himself, Murilo Bustamante, Fabio Gurgel, Marcelo Behring, Romero "Jacare" Cavalcanti and Carlos Gracie Jr training together at Jacare's academy in Ipanema.
Where in the source: Post "Escrito em:27/11/2007": "tipo Eu , Murilo Bustamante, Fabio Gurgel,Marcelo behing,Romero ‘Jacare”, Carlos Gracie Jr, todos na academia do Jacaré , ali em Ipanema".
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He also recorded that Wallid Ismail, then a brown belt, had to argue his way past the same black-belt rule; the deal struck was that he would have to earn his place at every session, and by this account more was demanded of him than of any of the men who fought.
Where in the source: Post "Escrito em:27/11/2007": "ele tinha que provar a cada treino que merecia estar ali , ele foi o mais cobrado de todos".
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The post carries a group photograph of that Carlson Gracie group, with him named in the caption among the four men kneeling in front.
Where in the source: Caption under the photograph: "ajoelhados: jose mario sperry,luis roberto duarte(bebeo),allan goes ,e ricardo cavalcanti".
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He recorded that the Carlson Gracie team's first UFC appearance was on 7 February 1997, at UFC 12, and corrected his own earlier date after checking it with Bustamante. The event had been set for Niagara Falls in New York State; on the eve, at around nine in the evening, the team were told New York had banned the sport and that they were being flown out by a chartered aircraft. Seats were short, and he describes the team using what standing it had so that nobody was left behind.
Where in the source: Post "Escrito em:10/12/2007": "ele me corrigiu as datas do evento que foi o primeiro do Carlson Gracie team no UFC, a data real foi no dia 7/2/97".
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The blog opened in November 2007 with a statement of what it was for, and with a claim about how far the sport had come: the MMA athlete was now recognised by the mainstream press as a dedicated sportsman who went through hard training, and the stigma of a hooligans' sport had been shaken off for good.
Where in the source: Post "Escrito em:21/11/2007": "espantou de vez todo o estígma de esporte de arruaceiros".
Accessed:
Brazilian Top Team blog, posts of 12 December 2007, 17 December 2007 and 14 January 2008, archived copy.(opens in a new tab)
He dated the team's turn to vale tudo to 1996 and described what it cost. Because Carlson Gracie was then living in Los Angeles and would only run the camp himself, the group moved there for some fifty days. The first week the four of them, he, Bustamante, Carlos "Carlao" Barreto and Jose Mario Sperry, shared Carlson's one-bedroom flat with a single bathroom before renting an apart hotel of their own.
Where in the source: Post "Escrito em:12/12/2007": "num apartamento de 1 quarto com um banheiro"; post "Escrito em:17/12/2007": "Depois da primeira semana não estava mais sendo possível conviver" and "Encontramos um apart hotel"; post "Escrito em:14/1/2008": "Passamos uns 50 dias na Califórnia treinando".
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He set out the week they trained there: ground work and hard sparring at Carlson's academy on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, boxing on Tuesdays and Thursdays at Steve Petramale's gym, with Carlson attending the boxing sessions and telling Petramale how he wanted boxing combined with vale tudo, because the point was not to learn to box for boxing's sake. Vitor Belfort, Rodrigo Medeiros, Sergio Cohen, Allan Goes, Wallid Ismail and Todd Medina trained alongside the four of them.
Where in the source: Post "Escrito em:17/12/2007": "segundas, quartas e sextas parte de chão e bloqueio na academia do Carlson e nas terças e quintas treinávamos boxe na academia do Steve Petramale".
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He wrote that the bond inside that team was so close it worked against them in training, and that Carlson broke it on purpose. Late one Thursday night Carlson telephoned him to warn that a team-mate had been saying he would finish him in Friday's sparring. At lunch the next day, after what he calls the best sparring session they had ever had, they compared notes: nobody had said anything and every one of them had taken the same call. Carlson's explanation, in his retelling, was that they were too good friends and the training was not what he wanted it to be, so he had ruffled the cockerels.
Where in the source: Post "Escrito em:17/12/2007": "tivemos o melhor treino de bloqueio que já havíamos feito"; "todos tinham recebidos o mesmo telefonema provocador, sempre colocando uns contra os outros"; and Carlson quoted: "então usei uma tática galista: Ericei os galos!"
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That Los Angeles camp led to an event in Birmingham, Alabama, where Bustamante fought a one-night three-man tournament and Barreto and Sperry each had a single bout on the same card as Renzo Gracie against Oleg Taktarov. He travelled with the team and names the handful of friends and cornermen who came with them, including a physical trainer, Alvinho Romano.
Where in the source: Post "Escrito em:14/1/2008": "Chegamos na cidade de Birmingham no Alabama uns 3 dias antes das lutas".
Accessed:
Brazilian Top Team blog, post of 17 April 2008, archived copy.(opens in a new tab)
Of UFC 15 on 17 October 1997, where Vitor Belfort met Randy Couture and Carlos Barreto met Dave Beneteau, he remembered the staging more than the results: the first UFC he had seen held at a casino, the show under a tent like a circus, a shipping container as the dressing room for the main event and, for Barreto, a mat laid on the floor with a plastic bag hung on a rope for a screen. "Who would have imagined we would get where we got", he wrote.
Where in the source: Post "Escrito em:17/4/2008": "era tatame no chão e a divisória era um saco plástico pendurado numa corda".
Accessed:
Super Lutas, "Bebeo Duarte tells old Jiu-Jitsu stories on his blog", 3 December 2007.(opens in a new tab)
A fight-trade outlet reported in December 2007 that the Brazilian Top Team leader Bebeo Duarte had launched a blog telling old-school jiu-jitsu stories, and singled out his account of what happened behind the scenes of the 1991 challenge against luta livre as the main one.
Where in the source: Opening paragraph: "The leader of Brazilian Top Team, Bebeo Duarte, recently launched his blog which tells some stories about “old school” Jiu-Jitsu."; and "The main one was the narration of everything that happened behind the scenes of the challenge against Luta-Livre, in 1991."
Accessed:
Wikipedia, "Brazilian Top Team".(opens in a new tab)
Brazilian Top Team was set up in April 2000 by Murilo Bustamante, Ricardo Liborio, Mario Sperry and Luis Roberto Duarte, all former members of the Carlson Gracie Academy, with its headquarters in Rio de Janeiro.
Where in the source: Lead section: "It was established in April 2000 by Murilo Bustamante , Ricardo Libório , Mário Sperry and Luis Roberto Duarte, former members of the Carlson Gracie Academy".
Accessed:
Denis Martins, "Inside Brazilian Top Team", On The Mat, 21 September 2006.(opens in a new tab)
A reporter who visited the gym in 2006 named him first among the team's creators, alongside Bustamante and Sperry, noting that Liborio had by then left to found American Top Team.
Where in the source: "Bebeo Duarte, Murilo Bustamante and Jose Mario Sperry are the creators of BTT, Ricardo Liborio is too, but now he’s the creator of ATT in America and he left BTT."
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In the same visit he explained why the team's fighters did their stand-up training away from the team gym and spread over several coaches rather than all in one place. It was not, he said, necessarily the right formula, but they had not restricted it at the start and changing it now would be hard; for the time being it worked and they managed it as well as they could.
Where in the source: Reporter's question "But why don’t they have the same coach inside BTT?", answered: "Maybe it’s not the correct formula to be used, but in the beginning of our team we didn’t restrict it and to change now would be hard".
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By 2006 six athletes who had come up in luta livre were on the Brazilian Top Team roster: Milton Vieira, Eraldo Paes, Carlos Clayton, William Parrudinho, Alexandre Ferreira and Maicon Alarcao. The reporter took their arrival as the point at which Brazilians saw the sport turn professional. Duarte himself said the relationship with the luta livre academies was now a good one: "we don't have a rivalry, we have competitions".
Where in the source: Roster line: "BTT has 6 former top Luta-Livre fighters on its squad"; the reporter's own line: "we from Brazil realized the sport had became professional"; and Duarte quoted: "Nowadays we’ve good relationship with Luta-Livre academies and we don’t have a rivalry, we have competitions".
Accessed:
On The Mat, "Brazilian Top Team - 6th edition of Jiu-Jitsu Camp", 13 June 2007.(opens in a new tab)
When the team sold places on its own training camps to visiting students, he was one of the six named instructors who supervised the daily sessions at the Rio headquarters, with Bustamante, Sperry, Fabiano Capoani, Eduardo Rios and Rodrigo Antunes.
Where in the source: Package list: "Daily training sessions at the Brazilian Top Team Headquarters under the supervision of the champions MURILO BUSTAMANTE, ZÉ MARIO SPERRY, BEBEO DUARTE, FABIANO CAPOANI, EDUARDO RIOS and RODRIGO ANTUNES".
Accessed:
Graciemag, "O Mundial na Historia: em 1997, o absoluto de Bitetti e de um Gracie ousado", 20 May 2013, quoting GRACIEMAG issue 11.(opens in a new tab)
Amaury Bitetti went into the 1997 World Championship as the reigning absolute champion and won the absolute again. Explaining how he had prepared, he listed Duarte among the men he had trained with, alongside Osvaldo Alves, the Carlson Gracie academy, Ricardo Liborio and the Nova Uniao group.
Where in the source: Described before the final as "campeão absoluto do ano anterior" and after it as "Mais uma vez, o campeão absoluto era Amaury"; Bitetti quoted: "Treinei com mestre Osvaldo Alves, com os caras da academia Carlson Gracie, com Ricardo Libório, Bebeo Duarte".
Accessed:
Graciemag, "Profile: Antonio Rodrigo 'Minotauro' Nogueira", first published 2008, republished 3 July 2018.(opens in a new tab)
Antonio Rodrigo “Minotauro” Nogueira, looking back on his own MMA debut in the United States - his first fight, in June 1999, against David Dodd - put Duarte in his corner at the moment it was going wrong. He had pulled half-guard and was reaching for an omoplata when, as he tells it, the shout came from outside: “This isn’t jiu-jitsu, kid! This is the real deal!”
Where in the source: Answer on turning professional: "In my first fight, in June of 1999, against David Dodd"; answer on the debut itself: "who was in the USA and was my cornerman, yelled".
Accessed:
Graciemag, "A semana inesquecivel de mestre Ricardo Liborio no Rio", 8 April 2024.(opens in a new tab)
At the ceremony for Ricardo Liborio's coral belt at the AABB club in Lagoa, Rio de Janeiro, on 17 March 2024, Liborio opened proceedings by asking that two of his mat brothers be graduated by Arthur Virgilio before him: Marcel Duque Estrada and Luis "Bebeo" Duarte. More than four hundred people attended.
Where in the source: "Libório convidou dois irmãos de tatame para serem graduados por Arthur Virgílio antes dele: os brabos Marcel Duque Estrada e Luis “Bebeo” Duarte".
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He is known throughout the sport by the nickname Bebeo, which Brazilian and international outlets alike put in quotation marks inside his full name.
Where in the source: "Marcel Duque Estrada e Luis “Bebeo” Duarte".
Accessed:
Portal do Vale Tudo, "Bebeo Duarte e o convidado do RESENHA PVT desta quinta-feira", 12 November 2020.(opens in a new tab)
He is a black belt under Carlson Gracie. Announcing him as its guest in November 2020, a Brazilian fight outlet introduced him that way and said he would talk about his start at the academy, Carlson's part in producing champions, and the founding of Brazilian Top Team.
Where in the source: Opening line: "Faixa-preta de Carlson Gracie, Bebeo Duarte é o convidado do RESENHA PVT desta quinta-feira".
Accessed:
Graciemag, "Sensei Sportv arma debate e revela desafiante de Aldo", 28 May 2010.(opens in a new tab)
By 2010 he was being presented as a pundit rather than a coach: the magazine announced him for the second edition of Sportv's MMA round table "Sensei DeBatendo", a forty-five-minute panel on the best and the worst of the first half of the year, alongside Sylvio Behring and Artur Mariano. It introduced him as a black belt and businessman.
Where in the source: Announcement: "a mesa redonda de MMA do Sportv, vai ao ar neste sábado analisando o melhor e o pior do esporte neste primeiro semestre do ano"; "com a participação do faixa-preta e empresário Luis Bebeo Duarte, do professor Sylvio Behring".
Accessed:
Graciemag, "Who wins the Strikeforce GP? Mino, Bebeo, and Rudimar offer predictions", 27 January 2011.(opens in a new tab)
In 2011 the magazine put him, Rudimar Fedrigo of Chute Boxe and Rodrigo Nogueira together as the people who had been around tournament fighting since the Pride era and asked them to pick the Strikeforce heavyweight grand prix. Described as a former Brazilian Top Team coach, he made Fedor Emelianenko the man to beat while saying he had faith in the Brazilians and would like a Werdum against Pezao final.
Where in the source: "says former BTT coach Bebeo Duarte", following his prediction: "The firm favorite is Fedor, he’s the man to beat."
Accessed:
Sherdog, fighter record for Luis Roberto "Bebeo" Duarte.(opens in a new tab)
His own record as a professional is a single bout: a first-round win over Egidio Amaro da Costa at Universal Vale Tudo Fighting 6 on 3 March 1997, stopped on strikes.
Where in the source: Table "FIGHT HISTORY - PRO", the single row: "win Egidio Amaro da Costa UVF 6 - Universal Vale Tudo Fighting 6 Mar / 03 / 1997 TKO (Submission to Punches) 1".
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He is Brazilian, based in Rio de Janeiro, and the database lists him under Brazilian Top Team.
Where in the source: Fighter header above the record: "Brazil Rio de Janeiro Luis Roberto Duarte"; and "ASSOCIATION Brazilian Top Team".
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Competition results
| Year | Event | Result | Division |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1999 | ADCC 1999Source: adcombat.com+99 kgNo-giVerified | 4th place | +99 kgNo-giVerified |