UFC 153: Silva vs. Bonnar conference call highlights

The UFC held a media conference call with the stars of the upcoming UFC 153: Silv vs. Bonnar card.

Current UFC middleweight champion Anderson “The Spider” Silva, considered the top pound-for-pound fighter in the world, and light heavyweight superstar and TUF finalist Stephan “The American Psycho” Bonnar were available to discuss their upcoming main event bout scheduled for Saturday, Oct. 13.

Also, former UFC interim heavyweight champion Minotauro Nogueira and his opponent Dave Herman were available to discuss their co-main event bout.

Check out the highlights below thanks to MMAmania.com.

Anderson Silva

The main thing for me stepping into every fight is keeping at ease. I want to go in there and be as creative and technical as I can and be able to do what I was born to do.
Everything I’ve gone through and all the promotions I’ve gone through built up a strong base for me to join the UFC and get to where I was today.
I’m always trying to create new things and find new ways to improve myself. The dodging tennis balls helps with my reflexes.
In my opinion, Stephan Bonnar is a great athlete and a part of the history of the UFC. He’s good on his feet, a good wrestler, has good groundwork and has good takedown defense. Anything can happen. You can get submitted or knocked out at any time.
I’ve got that responsibility on my back and I’m part of the UFC family. If my team said I couldn’t have done it, I wouldn’t do it. I was in a situation where the event might get cancelled and I stepped up and saved the show.
I believe you always have to have ethics. I’m definitely not perfect but I try my best and I’m showing that I’m always trying to prove myself.
Every fight is a fight. It doesn’t matter if it’s a three or five rounder. Win or lose, I’ll put on a great fight for the fan. I don’t know how long it will take to complete this fight, but it should be a great fight.
Everyone in the UFC is prepared to be a great champion. It’s an honor to be fighting Stephan Bonnar. I feel like I’m prepared. I want to give back to my Brazilian fans who have supported me these past two fights.
This is going to be one of the biggest fights of my career. Not having so much time to train, I believe this fight is going to make both of our careers take off. It’ll be one of the things with a UFC champion taking on a guy with one of the longest histories in the UFC as well.
I believe it’s really important for everyone to realize the value of Brazil to athletes today. I’m not putting down the other countries. They all have great fighters but Brazil has a strong tradition in MMA and some highly capable athletes.
There’s been lots of talk about me moving to 205. Dana has talked about it, media and the fans, but I don’t want to. I’m 37 years old and my weight class is 185 and I’ll stay grounded and do what I need to do which is defend my belt at 185.

Stephan Bonnar

I’ve been training as hard as I can and I’m in good enough shape to fight three rounds.
I was close to Carlson Gracie. He was like a father figure to me. Same thing with Sergio Pena after Carlson passed. I’ve felt very close to Brazil.
I’ve had big fights on big stages but the one with the most impact was on such a small stage with The Ultimate Fighter. That got more attention than the fights on the big pay-per-views later on. Fighting the best fighter in the world in his home country of Brazil, it’s crazy. It feels like I’m in a movie.
It really came by surprise honestly. I campaigned for some big fights but I couldn’t get them. In my head, I was trying to get over this whole fighting thing.
It looked like I wasn’t getting any of the things I asked for and I was having a problem not doing this. I’ve never been hungry for the title. I was just honest. I guess I could have lied to him and got that job coaching TUF against Forrest and his viewpoint is “what’s the point of a guy hanging around the divison, you should just hang it up” but I kind of like hanging around the division. Now I’m fighting the greatest pound for pound guy who’s been a champion for a long time. Is it not a big deal because a belt isn’t on the line? Hell no. It’ll be the greatest moment of my life if I win.
A win over Anderson would set me up for big opportunities but if I get destroyed, I guess not.
I hadn’t been in the gym in months and I got the call to help Bautista train for a few weeks. Thank God I did that because then I got the call to fight Anderson. I had an opportunity for a few weeks in advance to get the rust off.
I enjoy the negative tweets about how I don’t stand a chance. If I pull it off, those people’s jaws will drop.
He’s a really great accurate striker. I’m not gonna out-finesse him. I’ve got to out-ugly him and be aggressive. Eat a punch to land a punch. That’s about as much as I want to give away on that.
His only two fights at 205, he looked very fast and performed flawlessly.
It all depends how I do against Anderson Silva. If I do good, I’ll get rewarded.

Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira

I’m juggling the training and the baby stuff pretty good. It’s the media that’s making me go postal. I’m being honest with you, I usually train for three months but I’m having to squeeze it into three weeks and with all this extra media, I nearly lost it last night. I’m really on the verge of going postal.
My BJJ works very well. I’ve had 33 wins in my career and over 20 of them are from my jiu-jitsu. For this fight especially I trained a lot of Brazilian jiu-jitsu. If it goes to the ground I will go for it. Submission or knockout. I’m definitely training my jiu-jitsu.
I’m feeling good. My arm feels strong. I’m ready to go. I was hungry to fight and I asked to fight in Brazil and I got an opportunity to fight in Brazil.
Right now, I don’t want to make a title run because Junior dos Santos is my friend. He’s like my brother. I will fight other people until then. If he doesn’t have the title, then I could.
I’m recovered. I’ve had great training sessions. In training I’m always being tested so I believe if I’m training well, I’ll fight well.
It was a mistake against Mir to go for the submission after hurting him. I learned from this. If I hurt my opponent I will go for the KO.
I was disappointed that I couldn’t take the fight in July. I had two months of training for this fight. I ate a high kick in training and blocked a kick with the formerly broken arm and I wasn’t feeling good so I had to pull out. Now I’m gonna fight in Brazil which is a big honor for me. I’m very excited.

Dave Herman