No, Dragon Ball is still more popular, but Saint Seiya is way more popular in brazil than it is in any other place of the world. Well, i don't like it (besides lost canvas, lost canvas is awesome), i think it is due to being one of the first anime aired here.
I remember my first exposure to Saint Seiya. Picture it... Spring '92, Richmond, VA. Nothing noteworthy was on in the 7:30 AM timeslot unless you preferred watching either the news or Barney & Friends.
Obviously I wasn't watching either of those, so I randomly flipped channels until I found Saint Seiya on a Spanish channel. I wanted to learn Spanish so badly back then.
How awesome is that? It's so sad you guys got a butchered dub much later. The Italian dub got censored (moreso in reruns) but not to the point blood was green!
For some reasons, it mostly got popular in countries with languages that have Latin roots (Italy, Spain, Portugal, Brazil, France, etc). I think it's very curious.