UFC 134: Silva vs Okami 2 is set for this Saturday evening at the HSBC Arena in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The UFC held their pre-fight press conference on Thursday and it featured Silva, Okami, Rua, Griffin, Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, Brendan Schaub and UFC President Dana White.
Below are the highlights and notes from the press conference
Thanks to MMAMania.com for the notes on the UFC 134 Press Conference.
Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira: I come from three surgeries from last year. I went through physical preparation and he prepared me very well to go back into training. I had an excellent camp with Junior Cigano, Anderson Silva, Rafael Feijao and my brother. I’m going to give my best on Saturday.
Anderson Silva: Regarding the posture or the stance, up to now there has been mutual respect between Okami and myself. Whenever I am respected, I always respected. That’s the way I was brought up at home. This is a contact sport.
Dana White: There’s no bad blood between me and Anderson, at least on my side. The things he can do with his feet and hands are incredible.
The translator is gone, apologize for this. Will only be able to relay things said in English.
Brendan Schaub: The outreach program I did was amazing and it’s something I think a lot of Americans can learn from. It’s not something I’d been used to. I got a lot of my sponsors together and donated gear to the Favilla.
Forrest Griffin: Whenever foreigners come to the United States and fight, i usually cheer for the guy that looks like me.
Brendan Schaub: This is what I asked for, I expect it and it comes with the territory.
Yushin Okami: I’m just thinking about my fight. It’s a great honor to fight in Brazil.
Dana White: Rio is a destination world-wide. People know of Rio from all over the world. To do our first event here, in a huge international destination made a lot of sense.
Brendan Schaub: My jiu-jitsu is my number one passion in the sport. Obviously Minotauro is really good at jiu-jitsu. I’m no slouch there and I think I can hold my own. If jiu-jitsu is what I need to do to win the thing, I’m capable of that and my coaches have prepared me for him.
Dana White: It’s been very cool for us. Obviously we have a lot of respect for Royce. He’s the guy that started this thing. Some of the best fighters in the world are from Brazil. To get the reception that we’ve had is awesome. I’m really looking forward to Saturday night, to feel the crowd. It’s a pretty big deal for all of us, not just the UFC team but for these guys too.
Dana White: Every time we’ve gone in and put on a live event, it just explodes. We’re talking to some of the guys from the government to help expand martial arts. We’re gonna do some cool things here in Brazil other than just putting on fights.
Dana White: Much like the fighters and athletes respect the soccer players, the soccer players here respect these guys. It’s really organic and natural and when it happens, it’s natural. We don’t seek out to try to make it happen but it certainly doesn’t suck when it does.
Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira: This is the first time I’m gonna fight in front of my family and my students and I’m very excited.
Brendan Schaub: I respect guys that want to go after the best and take on guys whether they’re the best or legends. I don’t mind guys calling out other guys. I like it.
Ughhh, and the translator is back so I can’t hear anything spoken in English now.
Anderson Silva: I wanted to try out for soccer but I was late to the tryouts and I ended up training boxing instead.
Question asked to Anderson Silva that draws cheers and laughs from the crowd. I have no idea what they said.
Anderson Silva: This is a great opportunity for me and for Brazil, a great chance.
Dana White: He changed his mind, Anderson is going to fight into his mid-40’s
Anderson Silva: I didn’t train with Master Steven Segal for this training camp, but he’ll be at the fight on Saturday night.
Dana White: Chael Sonnen has a fight in Houston before we can make that decision. Obviously Dan Henderson is a possibility. We don’t know yet. It could be one of those guys.
