Felipe Silva explains how Cristiano Marcello helped him to transition to MMA

The story of BRAVE Combat Federation’s Felipe Silva starts like many others in Brazil: with limited resources but a lot of imagination and energy, which naturally led him to the way of sports.

“When I was growing up I was very, very active and was always full of energy, so this got the sport in my way since my early days”, Felipe says. “Like many other young Brazilians, and probably kids from all around the world at that time, I was heavily influenced by Martial Arts and action movies of the late ’80s and early ’90s. Seeing that kind of drove me to a path in which I was going to seek martial arts eventually, and if you combine this with my personality and active profile, it was pretty much a no-brainer”.

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But Felipe’s first contact with the activities that he was meant to be involved with, according to himself, was not with Mixed Martial Arts, the same one that later in his life would take him around the world and push him to his limits. It was actually pure striking, with muay thai and, mainly, kickboxing, and the Brazilian thought it was going to be like that for good.

“As I said, everything clicked perfectly for me to join martial arts at a really young age”, he continues. “But I was then hooked by kickboxing and Muay-Thai, I dedicated my whole youth and a massive part of my adult life to stand-up fighting. When I first fell in love with those arts, I believe that, apart from trying to mimic all those moves I was seeing in the movies, what moved the needles for me was the fact that I wanted to test myself, push my limits, seek new challenges. That’s what made me join it back in the day and definitely what made me the person and athlete I am nowadays”.

It wasn’t until 2009, when he already had 30 professional Muay-Thai and kickboxing bouts, that Felipe Silva decided to make the transition to Mixed Martial Arts, and a key person to the process was his mentor and friend Cristiano Marcello.

“As a person involved with martial arts pretty much my whole life, I was already seeing the growth of MMA but then in 2009, even before CM System was founded, I got in touch with Cristiano Marcello”, Silva recalls. “He had just recently left Chute Boxe, where he trained legends such as Anderson Silva, Wanderlei Silva, and Mauricio Shogun, and I wanted to have that level of professionalism and mentoring”.

But as a perfectionist, Felipe Silva wasn’t happy in just making the move and recklessly diving into a new sport, he meticulously prepared himself for the transition and made sure every single aspect of his game was sharp enough before stepping into the cage for the first time.

“After I joined CM System I trained with them for nearly four years, and kept having muay thai and kickboxing fights in the meantime, before I finally made my professional debut”, Felipe tells, revealing too that the strategy paid off. “And it was a dream one, I knocked my opponent out within the very first round, in less than three minutes, and kicked off what then became a successful international MMA career”.

Building a solid 8-2 professional record among regional and international bouts with many different promotions through six years, Felipe Silva finally joined BRAVE Combat Federation in 2019 and couldn’t be happier with his decision. With two bouts under the new banner and one victory, Silva is taking advantage of the forced hiatus due to the Covid-19 worldwide outbreak to catch up with some recovery and make sure he’s 100% when the activities are finally resumed.

“I’m extremely happy and pleased to have joined the BRAVE CF family. Of course, these particular times are not the easiest due to the Covid-19 but I was always aware that we would have to adapt ourselves because of the whole pandemic, and so I did. I’ve been doing some training in fundamentals, especially alongside my brother Fabiano Silva, and focusing on recovery, something that we can’t normally do given the intense routine of training camp and fighting. I want to make sure that I’ll be the best version of myself when this all comes to an end”, Silva wraps up.

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