How a drunken tradition led UFC on FUEL TV 10's Ronny Markes to wrong birth name

Here’s something you might not know about UFC on FUEL TV 10 fighter Ronny Markes: His actual name is Ronny Marki (or Ronny Marki Sales da Silva, to be specific).

So how has that middle name – the one that he now uses as his last name when fighting in the world’s biggest MMA promotion – been wrong for the past 25 years?

Alcohol, the fighter said with a laugh.

“It’s a curious thing,” the Brazilian fighter told MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com). “Here in Brazil, people like to commemorate the birth of a new child with lots of alcohol. So when [my father] registered my birth, he wrote my middle name as ‘Marki’ even though it was supposed to be ‘Markes.’”

In other words, don’t drink, kids. (And don’t drink when you have kids, kids.)

Markes (14-1 MMA, 3-0 UFC) looks for his fourth straight UFC win when he meets fellow middleweight Derek Brunson (10-2 MMA, 1-0 UFC) at Saturday’s UFC on FUEL TV 10 event. Their preliminary-card bout streams on Facebook prior to the FUEL TV-televised main card from Paulo Sarasate Arena in Fortaleza, Ceara, Brazil.

Even though his birth certificate says otherwise, Markes has been using the current spelling for as long as he can remember. But after Saturday’s bout, where he fights in his home country, he plans to get it formally corrected.

“My mother always told me it was ‘Markes,’ and I always liked that better since I was a child, especially since that was supposed to be my name to begin with,” he said. “So when I get back home from this fight, I’m taking care of that.”

For the latest on UFC on FUEL TV 10, stay tuned to the UFC Rumors section of the site.