The 3rd Degree
with Minotauro NogueiraThree seasons, eighteen episodes, four continents — probably the largest martial arts series ever produced. Hosted by UFC Hall-of-Famer Rodrigo Minotauro Nogueira, the show travels to the birthplaces of every major fighting tradition to train, spar, and tape up alongside their living masters, world champions, and Olympic medalists.
About the project
The biggest project of my life — a global atlas of fighting, told through the men and women who carry these arts forward in the places that invented them.
S01 · Roots
S02 · Expanded Ground
S03 · Legendary
S03 · Legendary
2019 · 6 Episodes
The third and final chapter — the legends arc. Minotauro sits with the names that wrote the book: figures whose careers became the reference point for entire eras of the sport. Every episode is a pilgrimage.
S02 · Expanded Ground
2018 · 6 Episodes
Season two went further — into the grappling traditions and ground games that built modern MMA from underneath. Catch wrestling rooms, judo dojos, sambo schools, and the gyms where the sport's submission language was rewritten.
S01 · Roots
2017 · 6 Episodes
Where it all started — the origins. Season one set the template: travel to the source of an art, train with the masters who keep it alive, and let the place do half the talking. Six countries, six disciplines, one Olympic-medalist host with nothing to prove.
Ep 01
Archived
Russia
Sambo
Ep 02
Archived
Thailand
Muay Thai
Ep 03
Archived
Okinawa
Karate
Ep 04
Archived
Japan
Judo
Ep 05
Archived
USA
Wrestling
Ep 06
Archived
South Korea
Taekwondo
Behind the build
Three years on the road. Eighteen masters. A working atlas of the world's fighting traditions, built one gym at a time.
Every episode meant a new country, a new discipline, and a new master willing to put a Brazilian heavyweight on the mat. The ask was the same in every gym: don't perform for us — train with us. That choice is what made the show. Minotauro is the rare host who can absorb that hospitality, return it in kind, and earn the right to be filmed inside it.
Across three seasons we covered MMA's full ancestral tree — the striking arts, the grappling arts, and the legendary figures who synthesized them. It remains the project I'm most proud to have led.