Mending ‘Minotauro’

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The accumulation of punishment absorbed over a decorated 40-fight career finally caught up to Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira.

Away from the cage for more than a year, “Minotauro” has undergone two surgeries -- one on his hip and a reconstructive procedure on his knee -- since he succumbed to punches against Cain Velasquez in the UFC 110 main event on Feb. 20 in Sydney, Australia. The 34-year-old Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt plans to endure a third surgery this month and targets May as a potential return to training.

“I was injured for the past three years, but I insisted on competing,” Nogueira told Sherdog.com. “When I moved to the UFC, I felt these injuries, and I wasn’t putting together good performances. MMA is a combination of punching, takedowns and the ground game, but I wasn’t able to fight well. I could box and do the ground, but I lost the correct timing in the transition from one to the other.”

Surgery became a necessity, as his body figuratively tapped out.

“I had to have the knee opened up and the [anterior-]cruciate ligament reconstructed in August,” Nogueira said. “After that, I had hip surgery at the end of the year, and I’ll have a third surgery in February in order to be 100 percent. That surgery will be on the other side of the hip. That kept me from doing jiu-jitsu and wrestling positions.”

Nogueira hopes to be healed and ready to compete at UFC “Rio” in August, as the promotion makes its long-awaited return to his homeland. Startling as it may sound, he has never competed in a professional MMA bout on Brazilian soil.

“I should be back to training in May,” Nogueira said. “Depending on my performance in training, I’ll be considering my future fights. It also depends on the UFC. I’m actually having these surgeries to be able to fight at UFC ‘Rio.’ This is my goal. My dream is to fight at UFC ‘Rio.’”

Nogueira has long been a crowd favorite, his spirit and zest for competition allowing him to cross all cultural lines. He has been finished only twice in 40 outings, despite encounters with former Pride Fighting Championships heavyweight titleholder Fedor Emelianenko, two-time Olympian Dan Henderson, 2006 Pride open weight grand prix winner Mirko “Cro Cop” Filipovic and one-time UFC heavyweight champion Josh Barnett. The exposure he received under the Pride Fighting Championships banner between 2001 and 2006 did wonders for his global profile.

“There are a lot of people who follow the history of MMA,” Nogueira said. “There was a time when the center of the sport was in Japan. Even for Americans, the sport hadn’t yet had that boom. The events of Pride echoed everywhere. If you go to Australia, you’ll see that many people like us. Even among the Americans, there are many people who like us.”

Many point to his victories over “Cro Cop” at Pride “Final Conflict 2003” and the enormous Bob Sapp at Pride “Shockwave” as defining moments in his career.

Nogueira submitted Sapp with a second-round armbar at Tokyo National Stadium on Aug. 28, 2002. The match showcased exactly how much punishment he could endure.

“I think it was having to face a guy that nobody wanted to face,” Nogueira said. “Fedor couldn’t face him; Cro Cop didn’t want to fight him. The guy was a feared guy. Nobody knew him, but they knew he was pure explosion. He was a 170-kilogram black man, and I had to prepare a strategy to deal with a guy who wasn’t losing to anybody. He could hurt me, and I knew it. It was like when you fight with a white belt on the first day of practice. You know you’ll win, but he can explode and hurt you. He had a notion of the ground game and wasn’t completely secular.


“He was very strong, and it was really a very difficult fight,” he added. “It was complicated to devise a strategy against him. Overall, the pressure was too much, because it was in a stadium in front of 108,000 people. It was something very different for me. I had fought [Sanae] Kikuta 15 days before and should have stayed in Japan for those 15 days, but I wanted to go home, so I went to Brazil and returned to Japan in 15 days. I felt the difference of the time zones, and I wasn’t 100 percent.”

Nogueira finished Cro Cop with an armbar, as well, on Nov. 9, 2003, at the Tokyo Dome. Again, he showcased his amazing resilience.

“Cro Cop was a guy who wasn’t losing to anyone, and Fedor had passed on fighting against him twice -- once because he was hurt and the other because he would not,” he said. “Because of this, they took the belt from him and made an interim belt. That was a great fight and very difficult. He was in top form and hadn’t lost to anyone. I faced fighters at the height their games, when they were most feared, because they hadn’t lost to anyone. When I sat on the ropes in between the first and second rounds and looked at the other side, and his coaches were all celebrating and thinking he’d knock me out, I realized I had a chance.

“I had trained with an American boxing trainer who told me to run to the right side of him, because the guy is a lefty,” Nogueira added. “I realized I was running the wrong way, to the good side of his leg. We had trained so long. I was supposed to go back and try to hit him on the counterattack. He was faster than me, so every time he landed a punch, I couldn’t hit the counterstrike. I picked up the double-leg just in time. I took a jab and went to his legs. I struck at the right time when he stretched out his arm. For me, it was the most exciting fight.”

Nogueira joined the UFC in July 2007. Results have been mixed. Wins over Heath Herring and Tim Sylvia were offset by losses to Velasquez and Frank Mir.

Perhaps his most enduring performance in the Octagon came at UFC 102, when he outboxed and out-grappled UFC hall of Famer Randy Couture.

“It was a defining moment, because I was coming off a loss and people doubted me a lot,” Nogueira said. “Besides all that, I was fighting in Couture’s hometown, and that influenced the pressure. I really was a bit tense. In Pride, I was a little more relaxed. When I fought in Japan, even against a Japanese fighter, I felt that 50 percent of the audience was mine. In the U.S., I rarely have this confidence that the audience will cheer for me, because, most of the time, you’re fighting an American.

“Against Couture, to be honest, I was nervous before, but when I stepped inside [the cage], I thought I wouldn’t lose,” he added. “I knew that his game didn’t mesh with mine. I was well-trained in striking, and if he took me to the ground, he would eventually lose. I’m better than him on the ground. I know that American wrestler style of ground-and-pound and how to do well in that sort of fight.”

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