The crowd at the UFC 140 open workouts watched breathlessly as Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira threw a series of vicious combinations into the training mitts, each one quicker and more powerful than the last. The only times he paused was to send a smoldering glare in the direction of his opponent, Frank Mir, who was standing across the gym. The look on Big Nog’s face was unmistakable, this is a man who wants his revenge.
After coming up short in his first fight against Mir, Nogueira is a man who wants to prove that the man Mir defeated is not the man who will be in the opposite corner on Saturday night.
He doesn’t like giving excuses, but it is well-known that the Brazilian legend was suffering from staph infection that night. What wasn’t known was just how badly both his hips were bothering him, requiring surgery, and how far back the problems had plagued him.
“The first time I had really bad pain in my hip was back in 2004, when I fought Fedor. I started feeling pain during training back then. In 2007, it got worse when I fought Tim Sylvia. Then when I fought Randy Couture it was really bad, I couldn’t sleep for four days before the fight. We couldn’t really find the right treatment. I met a doctor in Colorado and he [convinced me] to do the surgery. It took me two months for each leg to put my feet on the ground. I was walking on crutches for four months. It was tough. Plus I had my ACL [injury] before, so that was five months.”
Despite all the setbacks, Nogueira never considered quitting.
“I love what I do, that’s why I keep going. I have great training partners always calling me to train. Maybe if I didn’t have those guys, I could have stopped.”
But after a long, hard road to recovery, Nogueira insists he’s in prime shape and ready to go.
“I feel healthy right now. I feel more flexible. I have better speed in my legs. When you don’t have speed, that’s how I lost to [Frank] in the last fight.”
When asked about Mir’s insistence that Nogueira is making excuses for losing, he smiles.
“Frank’s the type of guy, you can’t really pay attention to what he says. He always likes to talk. I’m doing my job and I know I can put on a better fight then last time.”
His words are affable, but there is a tension in his eyes. A tension that may not leave until “Minotauro” erases the loss to Mir from his record and his mind once and for all.
