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08-12-2005, 12:30
Rei Zulu keeps fighting
At age 58, mythical MMA fighter faces adversities typical to the Brazilian population, but still struggles for consecration
By Raimundo Garrone; pictures by Biaman Prado

“Is there any money in for me?� This was Casemiro Nascimento Martins (or King Zulu’s) second reaction as he found out, through telephone, about our desire to interview him. The first was to kick the ass of anyone in the magazine who might wish to challenge his majesty. Thank God that was not our intention. But what kind of a king is this who only speaks about making money with what is left of his fame and courage? Is he not the one who traveled to fight some of the country’s greatest stars?

Mixed Martial Arts’ black king today is but another ordinary Maranhao citizen in the same situation as millions of other poor Brazilians. Now the challenge is to beat the poverty issued by 30 years of fighting. The man who was once called king lives in a single-bedroom house at one of the most violent areas of Sao Luis, the capital of Maranhao, in the company of Maria Graça de Carvalho, grandson Elieson Costa, a few chickens and ducks, plus three stray dogs – Dirty Leather, Two-face and Little Cougar. The rest is old furniture, a few trophies and other rusty stuff.

“He did not own a thing. It was after we got married that our life became a little better and nowadays we even have our own house,� Mrs. Graça says, while she takes advantage of her husband’s absence to smoke a cigarette and tell us about the ups of being companion to the man who “will never cease to be a king.�

It was in the presence of Graça’s flatteries –she was saying he looked like and elegant 40-year-old– that Zulu showed up. Directly he came in sweaty, he went back to the phone conversation, whether there was any chance of him getting a few bucks for the interview. Then he sat down sternly, his hair dyed black, and asked the first question, which he would repeat the whole day.

“Does Ratinho read the magazine?� referring to a popular television artist known for making a show out of poor people’s disgrace and helping them get the assistance they need. “If he finds out about the condition I’m in, he’ll help me.� The king’s will is to set up his own academy and get someone to sponsor his travels to the Brazilian inland towns where he has fought and, he believes, there are still some worshippers left. For now, what is left of his majesty is an old album full of newspaper clippings and a long-expired passport of his Japan excursion.

There is no explaining his career’s KO. What’s for sure is that he maintains his family with only R$500 a month, which he earns whenever he is able to set up fights at the Maranhao inland. The result is that, on the stove, the two old pans contain what could be considered a punch on the stomach: the inexorable menu of rice and beans with some jerked meat.

He is only able to change the dish when the owner of the ducks and chickens Zulu breeds in the backyard bestows one of them upon the legendary warrior, or when the latter arrives from one of his excursions with a few bucks to get food at the joint around the corner. It is amid the backyard animals that Zulu drags a truck tire at the break of dawn before having oatmeal, during the training spans.

Then he goes through the daily routine of walking around the neighborhood –where he is quite famous– bearing an out-of-phase Ericsson cell phone. That is how he stays in touch with inland folks interested in new fights. And, in order to make easier for people to challenge him, he claims to be 60 years old. It’s actually 58, completed on June 9th.

Part 2

“The way I am right now it’s hard to do professional bouts. So I travel inland challenging amateurs, these young tough-guys from gyms,� he reveals. But, he stresses, with the proper nutrition and training he is in condition of giving many competent fighters a hard time.

“Does anyone not know me? I’ve traveled across Brazil and hit a lot of people,� he brags. Fame, however, is not enough to take him from poverty, diminished by the land he got in the invasion he lives in.

“It used to be worse. I lived in a straw house…� he recalls. Zulu refrains from explaining this “gift� from Luizao, controversial fellow who probably had some protection from a couple of politicians, and supposedly promoted an invasion industry in Sao Luiz, and ended up murdered. Zulu only claims him to have been his Zulu’s fan.

It was from another fan, amazonense Luis Alberto Nicolau, that he obtained the bricks to erect the present house. But living on favour Doesn’t take him away from Olympia, where he seems to hide, nourishing a glorious past. He remembers the fights against Rickson Gracie both in Brasilia DC and in a packed Maracanazinho (little brother to Maracana stadium, once the biggest football arena in the world).

“I only lost because they made up rules disabling me to kick ass and I got immobilized,� he argues, contradicting reports of those days that described kicks and punches on the face. Not even the typical poverty horizon is able to take his mind from the heavens; however, we rest in doubt about how long this past will be able to keep him standing. Besides the limited nutrition, Zulu’s family, like most of the neighbors, depends on Unified Health System for any sort of treatment.

Suddenly Zulu is required to assist an old man with an asthma crisis who was about to die right in front of a desperate family, because the public hospital two blocks away doesn’t have an ambulance to pick him up.

“No-one here’s got health insurance. We count only on God and that hospital nearby,� he bewails while remembering that his wife suffers from the same kind of agony. She needs to urgently remove an ovary myoma, and the king hasn’t yet arranged a room for her.

No one knows whether he is going to stop having children after the nine he has left scattered in the country. His heritage will go to the only one who lives in Maranhao. Wagner Conceiçao Martins, “Zuluzinho,� is 6’9’’ tall, weighs not-so-well-distributed 290lb, and follows Dad’s footsteps: he is training to cross Brazil challenging anyone who dares come across him.

The essence running through his veins is responsible for 35 wins in 35 MMA fights, three by KO, conquered in Maranhao as well as other states in Brazilian Northeast and North. Unlike his father, he divides his time between working as a security guard in reggae clubs scattered through the city. “That’s where I make some money,� he clarifies. His father jokes, “He was raised by his grandmother, is kind of slow, but he’s got a future.� Zulu himself refuses to work as a guard. “I’m Zulu, King Zulu, and I won’t be anyone’s employee or security. I’ll live or die out of fighting,� he insists. And, just to make sure, he asks if Ratinho reads the magazine…