Wanderlei Silva has once again failed to secure a seat in Brazil’s Congress after coming up short in Sunday’s general election.
The PRIDE and UFC veteran, who represented the Progressive Party (PP) affiliated with Brazil’s far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, earned 13,907 votes during the election. He needed more than 61, 500 votes to represent his home state in Congress.
This marks the second time that Silva will attempt to run for congress in Brazil after failing to win a seat in the 2018 elections. The UFC veteran was then affiliated with the Social Democratic Party.
Silva is the latest fighter to enter the political fray, following the likes of former UFC champion Tito Ortiz, who served as Mayor Pro-Tem of Huntington Beach, California, until he resigned from city council less than six months later. Others include former UFC champ BJ Penn, who failed to secure the Republican nomination for governor of Hawaii.
Silva has since thanked his voters on Instagram, adding that he “learned a lot and saw how much I still have to learn.” The retired fighter has since continued to campaign for Bolsonaro, who is heading to a run-off election with bitter rival Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva following a tight election Sunday.
While Lula had won more than 48 percent—a five percent lead over Bolsonaro—the former president fell short of the more than 50 percent of valid votes needed to prevent a run-off.
Voters now have an additional four weeks to determine which of the two men will become the next president of Brazil.
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