The Story Of Mirco and Shogun Rua

Yo yo yo, Lionel Ceccavara here, I'm a Swiss Photographer from Basel. I would like to tell you a story i was witnessing the last years, a friend of mine Mirco Tonelli has a huge passion for MMA and fighting sport combat. He was himself a fighter younger and he started by giving some MMA lessons in a small gym. It was in the basement of a fitness club named balena. In this time 2017 there was one fighter from brazil that Mirco appreciated a lot, the Name?SHOGUN RUA. Mirco saw on the internet a site was offering a signed shogun rua shirt. Mirco wrote, and shogun signed a shirt and sent it to Mirco. So with huge joy in his heart he wrote directly to shogun to let him know how happy he was to get that signed item. But he never got an answer. Then a coincidence made that Mirco could get in touch via Facebook to Danilo Marques, a friend of Shogun. Mirco pleased Danilo to say THANK you to Shogun. so he did and then they decided all to meet in Hamburg during UFC Fight Night 134. Shogun Mauricio Rua fought Anthony Smith. He lost unfortunately in the first round.After the fight, Mirco could finaly meet one of his idols. Shogun saw Mirco and he was like, you are the guy from Switzerland, right? Mirco no i'm from Italy, of course that wasn't his answer. Yes i'm from Muttenz Switzerland. Shogun mentioned that he would be very interested in visiting this beautiful country. Mirco, no problem, come and i take care of everything. So Shogun came with his family to Switzerland. Mirco trained with Shogun and later in week they went for skiing in Lenzerheide. I'm sure those are the only pictures of a brazilian MMA-Legend on ski on YoutubeIn Lenzerheide Shogun asked Mirco: “why don't you have your own gym?” - To be honest, knowing Mirco i knew that this would be the ultimate dream for Mirco. They talked about details and they decided that Mirco can open a gym with the Name Shogun. On the other hand, Mirco is always taking care of the family rua when they show up in Switzerland. In the meantime they did some seminars in other gyms, like here in the tortuga gym Basel. Later Mirco, with full motivation, rented a huge hall in Aesch / Switzerland and started building up this gym. With love, dedicated passion to the sport and Shogun as a friend in the back the gym became like a piece jewelry. The next time Shogun was in Switzerland he wanted to see what Mirco could set up. Mirco was not honest to Shogun and told him, you know we are not finished, Cage is missing, gloves and punching bags were also missing. Of course Mirco was not telling the truth, Shogun introduced Wanderlei Silva to Mirco. So Wanderlei also came to Switzerland to visit Mirco. He came to Birsfelden, by the way all these location that i'm mentioning are around Basel, so he came to Birsfelden to get a Tattoo from Ivan at the ink society tattoo studio. He wanted a tattoo relating to his trip a got a small tattoo of the Matterhorn. Mirco said, come and take some pics in the Studio. So years ago Mirco gave me a shirt of Rampage Jackson and i had the brilliant Idea to wear it that day... What a mistake, Rampage was the huge opponent, even enemies back then. Mirco was like, how can you idiot wear this shirt today? Then i tried to calm Wanderlei down by offering some chocolate.

In the meantime his Shogun Team Swiss gym was running like hell and Rafael Cordeiro himself showed up for a 1.5 hour Seminar, last year everyone saw this training footage with legend Mike Tyson. . I could be there and i took also some pics during the event.

So the next step for Mirco was to created his own championship, the SHOGUN FIGHTING CHAMPIONSHIP was created. The first 7 editions were in his gym, number 8-9 in a bigger space in Muttenz called mitenza and number 10 took place dezember 21st.in the St. Jakob hall in Basel. – I mean if you leave in Basel you'll never bring over 1000 people in a stadium watching not famous fighters fighting for a not so known event like the SHOGUN FIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP. But it was a huge success, over 2500 people came for Switzerland biggest MMA Event ever. There were 13 fights, the son of Wanderlei Silva, Thor Silva was the opener and he could win against . Shogun rua and Wanderlei Silva were both there. The main Event was local hero Kevin Buser who won against Enid Spago. For me as a photographer it was an absolute new experience. Never attended an event like this and it felt to me like 13 little stories, i was using mostly a 50mm apperture 1.2 and a 85mm 1.2 RF Lens on a R5 markII body. Inside the cage the 24-70 2.8 was fine and from far away i used the 70-200mm 2.8. Full open aperture is important to make the fence of the cage disappear. Light is always the main thing in photography. My cam was a 45 megapixel Canon R5 markii which is not the best in these light conditions. Most images were denoised in Lightroom, not much, a value between 25-30. Lightroom users will know what i am talking about.So the next day i went to the Hotel for an Interview with the 2 Legends.

Hope you enjoyed this unusual Story of my buddy Mirco, next step will be me traveling to Finland in order to catch some northern lights. Total different story