Rafael dos Anjos was born on October 26, 1984, in Niteroi, in the Brazilian state of Rio de Janeiro. By his own account he was a troubled kid who spent much of his early childhood fighting in the streets of his hometown, and at age nine he began training Brazilian jiu-jitsu under Daniel Matheus, a discipline that redirected his energy away from street violence and toward competition. His early life and family background are documented on Wikipedia.

Dos Anjos rose through the Brazilian jiu-jitsu ranks quickly, winning a World Jiu-Jitsu Championship gold medal as a purple belt in 2003 before eventually earning a black belt, a path detailed on his own RDA Academy biography page. He went on to become a fourth-degree black belt under Aldo “Caveirinha” Januario and Philipe della Monica and later added a black prajied in Muay Thai under Rafael Cordeiro, the well-rounded base that carried him into professional mixed martial arts.

Dos Anjos turned professional in 2004 and spent the next four years fighting almost exclusively on Brazil’s regional circuit, competing for promotions including Juiz de Fora Fight, Arena BH and Shooto Brazil, plus a brief run in Japan’s Pancrase organization, building an 11-2 record that eventually earned him a call from the UFC. His path into full-time competition, and the previous work as a jiu-jitsu instructor that supported him along the way, is outlined on his official UFC athlete profile.

He made his UFC debut on November 15, 2008, at UFC 91, losing to Jeremy Stephens by third-round knockout in a rocky start to his time in the organization. The following years were a grind through the deep lightweight division, with paydays that were modest by UFC standards while he worked to establish himself as a legitimate contender rather than a house fighter.

Dos Anjos’s move up the rankings accelerated with a Fight of the Night win over Tyson Griffin, a submission of Terry Etim in Abu Dhabi, and a knockout of George Sotiropoulos, before he strung together the two biggest wins of his career: a first-round knockout of former champion Benson Henderson in August 2014 and a lopsided decision over Nate Diaz that December, a run that forced the UFC to give him a title shot.

He challenged Anthony Pettis for the UFC Lightweight Championship at UFC 185 on March 14, 2015, and won a shutout unanimous decision, with all three judges scoring it 50-45 across five rounds despite dos Anjos fighting through a torn MCL suffered weeks before the bout. The scale of the win, detailed on Wikipedia’s UFC 185 event page, is still described as one of the most decisive title-winning performances in UFC history.

Dos Anjos defended the belt against Donald Cerrone at UFC on Fox 17 in December 2015, stopping him by TKO in just 66 seconds, the fastest finish in UFC lightweight title history at the time, before losing the title to Eddie Alvarez by first-round TKO in July 2016. He rebuilt at both lightweight and welterweight over the following years, and in December 2022 he submitted Bryan Barberena to become the first fighter in UFC history to surpass eight hours of total cage time, a record he extended further at UFC 299 in March 2024, as confirmed by Guinness World Records, which credits him with 8 hours, 41 minutes and 49 seconds inside the Octagon.

Across a UFC career spanning 36 fights he is tied for the seventh-most bouts in promotion history and has fought a remarkable cross-section of eras, sharing the cage with Anthony Pettis, Donald Cerrone, Eddie Alvarez, Tony Ferguson, Kamaru Usman, Leon Edwards, Robbie Lawler and Colby Covington, a résumé his official UFC profile lists alongside 11 submission wins and five knockouts.

Dos Anjos’s dominant 2015, in which he shut out Pettis for the title and then blitzed Cerrone in 66 seconds, earned him recognition as Sherdog’s Fighter of the Year for 2015, one of the sport’s most respected year-end honors.

Nearly a decade later, returning to fight at UFC 308 on his 40th birthday, he was still being profiled by the promotion as a defining example of longevity, telling UFC.com, “I feel I still have a lot in me… I don’t feel that the time to stop is right now,” a comment that captures how the MMA media has come to frame him: less a fading former champion than a durable veteran who keeps showing up against the next generation.

During the UFC’s Reebok apparel era from 2015 to 2021, dos Anjos was one of the promotion’s more consistently paid fighters through the brand’s outfitting payouts, and he separately carried sponsorship from 1Law around his UFC Fight Night 49 bout in 2014 and later from logistics company SHIFT Freight, deals summarized by FirstSportz’s breakdown of his career finances, which notes his outside sponsorship associations have been more modest than his in-cage accomplishments would suggest.

The Reebok relationship was not without friction. In January 2016, he was fined $10,000 for wearing an unauthorized Evolve MMA shirt at the UFC on Fox 17 weigh-ins, a violation of the promotion’s exclusive outfitting policy that was widely reported in MMA media at the time and underscored just how tightly the league controlled fighter apparel income during that era.

Dos Anjos founded RDA Academy, a Brazilian jiu-jitsu, Muay Thai and MMA gym at 6001 W Parmer Lane in Austin, Texas, where he serves as founder and head instructor offering adult, teen and kids classes. The academy’s mission, to build “champions both on and off the mats,” is described on the gym’s official about page.

He has also held a seasonal teaching contract with Evolve MMA in Singapore and trained fighters including Cris Cyborg and Marlon “Chito” Vera as a training partner at the RVCA Training Center in California before that facility closed in 2023. Running his own academy while still competing has meant balancing coaching duties with a full training camp schedule deep into his forties.

In 2012, dos Anjos relocated his family from Rio de Janeiro to Orange County, California, to train full-time at Kings MMA, and by 2015 he and his wife Cris and their two sons were settled in Newport Beach, an upscale coastal community, a move covered in a UFC.com feature on his relocation in which he credited the move with giving his family a better quality of life and himself better training partners.

No specific home purchase price, additional real estate holdings or vehicle collection has been independently documented in public reporting. Secondary write-ups describe him as living comfortably off two decades of fight purses rather than pointing to any single marquee asset, and HMW treats his residence as a lifestyle choice tied to training rather than as a valued investment property absent verified figures.