Issue 058
January 2010
When many people thought he was finished, Antonio Rodrigo ‘Minotauro’ Nogueira returned in style and surprised the MMA world by beating Randy Couture at UFC 102, disappointing the 14,000 Americans who packed out the Rose Garden Arena to see their local idol. In the following report, Fighters Only went to Brazil to find out the secrets of the only heavyweight in history to win four belts in different events (Pride, Rings, UFC and WEF). Now he wants to take Brock Lesnar’s belt, and if you think that’s impossible, you better read the story that follows.
“The wheels from the truck passed through my legs and then over my body. I just had time to move my head a little, listening to the noise of my ribs breaking while tons of weight passed over my lung. There was a lot of blood coming out from my mouth – I wasn’t able to breathe right.”
The calm way that Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira recalls the accident that put him in a coma for four days when he was a child, explains the way he handled tough fights in the ring. The accident occurred when he was 11 years old, leaving a party with his twin brother Rogerio. “Actually we were playing on top of a truck with a group of friends. Suddenly, the driver turned the engine and started to go down the slope. Everybody was jumping from the side and I jumped from the back of the truck. That's when the driver, suddenly, started moving backward to maneuver and took me down.”
After seven months in hospital, Rodrigo went home and began to feel a strong pain in his neck. His father took him back. In the hospital, the doctors discovered that they had left a catheter (used to drain the blood from the lungs) in his neck. After all that, he had a tough fight against an infection picked up in hospital. “I was coming and going from the hospital for about 11 months, doing full-time respiratory therapy,” recalls Nogueira, who lived in the countryside city of Vitória da Conquista, 400km away from Salvador, capital of Bahia.
Martial arts were essential in helping the young Nogueira to recover. Rodrigo began to practice judo, taekwondo and boxing. “Martial arts were very important in my recovery. Also I grew up on a ranch with nine children [four brothers and five cousins]. It was such a wonderful childhood, we used to ride horses and climb trees every day, so it was really important to the development of my physical abilities,” remembers Nogueira.
Why ‘Minotauro’?
When Nogueira was 13 years old, his father and mother divorced and he went to live with his father in Salvador, where he started to train boxing with Luis Dórea. In 1994 when Rodrigo was 17 years old, he was going to his boxing class when he saw a video of UFC 1. “I was amazed by Royce´s style. There was a jiu-jitsu dojo in the same academy, and I decided to go up to the third floor to check it,” he recalls. The new student impressed Guilherme Assad (a black belt of Ricardo De La Riva).
“When I first saw Rodrigo training I felt he had a special gift for the sport. Besides being very strong, he learns everything very fast. In the first classes he was giving a hard time to much older students,” remembers Assad. Impressed by the strength and brave heart of the new student, his new friends gave him a nickname. “The guys said I looked like a bull, that I was damn strong. So they came up with the name. It was funny and I liked it – it imposed respect and became my brand,” says Mino.
Passionate for training hard and competitions, Rodrigo asked Assad to enroll him in all the local jiu-jitsu competitions. From white to brown belt, Rodrigo won every competition in his weight category and absolute (open weight) and soon his name became recognized even in the home of jiu-jitsu, Rio de Janeiro. It was while competing in the brown belt absolute category in the Brazilian national championships in 1998 that Rodrigo showed that his talent was far ahead that of others from Bahia.
The Robocop from Bahia
How come a guy from Bahia, a state that has no tradition in jiu-jitsu, could come to Rio and submit the strongest guys from the strongest academies? One month after the nationals, that curiosity saw Marcelo Alonso, editor of Tatame magazine, to look for the new talent in his home state. In an attempt to explain Minotauro’s gift to the fans, he published the first-ever report about Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira.
The unbelievable story of Rodrigo, very similar to the Hollywood movie Robocop (a policeman who recovers from horrific injuries and is transformed by doctors into a Cyborg cop) made Tatame propose he was like a Brazilian version of the famous character. “The difference is that he started to dedicate his life to the police, and I dedicated mine to martial arts,” said Rodrigo, making fun of the nickname given by the magazine.
At the end of the article, published back in 1998, Minotauro was asked about the possibility of fighting vale tudo and he answered, “Not now. Vale tudo is such a violent sport and I have a lot to learn. The time has not come yet”. The report finished by saying that Minotauro, for all his story of bravery and his excellent ground skills, had all the ability to become a great vale tudo champion. While a truck ran over him in the past, he was now running over his opponents.
Rodrigo never forgot about his first report. “That report really marked my life. I use to walk with that magazine up and down, showing that to everyone. It made me start to think seriously about vale tudo,” says Minotauro.
Making his debut
Six months after that first interview, Minotauro went to Miami to visit his mother (who lives there) and went to train at Conan Silveira’s academy (a vale tudo fighter from Carlson Gracie Team who later founded American Top Team). “Conan was impressed with my submissions and said that I had to stop training with the kimono and emphasize submission for MMA.” During the training, Minotauro submitted everybody easily and impressed the promoter Jamie Levine (one of Conan’s blue belts) who invited him to fight in his show, WEF 6 (6/12/1999) for a prize sum of $500.
Supported by Conan, Rodrigo decided to make his MMA debut. “I fought MMA like I used to fight jiu-jitsu, doing half guard and omoplatas, crucifix, some positions that were not used in MMA. Conan went crazy in my corner,” recalls Minotauro, who submitted the American David Dodd with a crucifix (a uncommon choke/neck crank not often seen in MMA). Four months later, Rodrigo defeated his second opponent (Nate Schroeder) by armbar and was invited to fight in Japan in the heavyweight tournament Rings KOK.
In Japan Minotauro didn’t disappoint the fans and defeated three opponents in the 1999 King of Kings tournament, but lost in the final by controversial decision to Dan Henderson, who earned $200,000, while Nogueira gained just $30,000. “That mistake made me train more than ever to never allow my fights to be in the judge’s hands,” he says.
The best army ever
After losing to Henderson, Rodrigo moved to Rio and started to train with the Brazilian Top Team. “BTT was a turning point in my career. I always had talent, but I never had tough sparring. In BTT I could train every day with the best fighters. We had like 50 top black belts every day. We had great teachers like Murilo Bustamante, Bebeo Duarte, and Mario Sperry. In my opinion, Mario Sperry is the best MMA trainer ever. An MMA team like that with names like Paulo Filho, Ricardo Arona, Vitor Belfort, Sperry, Murilo, Alan Goes, could only be top,” says Nogueira.
Trained better than ever, Rodrigo returned to Rings in 2001 and defeated five opponents in one of the toughest heavyweight tournaments ever, earning the title of Rings King of Kings. One year and eight months after receiving $500 in his MMA debut, Nogueira had won $200,000. Immediately after, Nogueira was invited to Pride where he won the heavyweight belt after defeating Gary Goodridge, Mark Coleman, and Heath Herring. In less than three years, the man who said he had no plans to fight MMA was considered, unanimously as the most respected fighter in the world.
Bob Sapp and Helio Gracie
In 2002, Minotauro wrote his name in MMA history in a fight that is considered by many as one of the greatest MMA fights of all time when he fought the giant Bob Sapp. Weighing 171kg, Sapp was passing like a truck through the MMA world. “The first time I saw him in Japan backstage I thought ‘this guy is huge, how do we fight a guy like this? What would make me fight a guy that size?’ Six months later I was face-to-face with the guy in a crowded soccer stadium, the biggest event in MMA history, fighting for an audience of almost 100,000 people.”
Minotauro had received Sapp as a punishment from Japanese promoters. “Motoko Ushida was my manager and Kamamura, who was her boss, created an event [UFO] to compete with Pride, and I had a gap in the contract where he could fight in another event. I fought Sanae Kikuta and Pride did not like it. Then I returned to Brazil and they wanted to take my belt. Then they invited me to fight 15 days later against Bob Sapp at Pride Shockwave. They tried to put him against Cro Cop, but Mirko didn’t want it, so they put me against him as a punishment. I was just coming back to Brazil, getting back into the time zone, but they kind of forced me to fight with the giant 15 days after Kikuta. I spoke with Ze Mario and he said ‘let’s do it’,” explains Minotauro.
“The fight started and I thought, ‘I’ll go in for his legs’, but he held me up by my waist and hit my head into the ground with all his weight over me. I kind of fainted, he was beating me up. But I started to find some holes in his game, and I knew that jiu-jitsu had to enter. He was too big to resist that much. People could see that the jiu-jitsu works, despite the size difference. I even remember that Helio Gracie was there and came to congratulate me saying, ‘good fight, you have a big heart’. It was very nice to have used the jiu-jitsu and got the recognition of master Helio – it was perfect for me.”
Facing Fedor
After 19 wins Minotauro was finally dealt his first loss by the Russian Fedor Emelianenko, who robbed him of his belt at Pride 25 in 2003. Fedor has gone on to dominate the category ever since. “I fought Fedor three times and I felt the strongest in the first, he was really prepared. He came flying and controlled the entire fight on the ground, succeeded with takedowns, punches – I tried to submit him but he escaped from everything. I did not think he was all that, and today, we know he is a fucking fighter.” They fought twice more, once in the final of the Pride 2004 heavyweight Grand Prix (which ended as a no-contest when Minotauro opened a cut with an accidental headbutt). Four months later they fought again and the Russian won by unanimous decision.
Entering the UFC
In 2007 Minotauro decided to leave BTT and with the support of his friend Anderson Silva, he signed a contract with the UFC and opened his own training center, joining Anderson Silva and many friends who had left BTT with him.
With an excellent structure and some amazing training partners, Minotauro was one of the few Pride fighters who made a successful transition from the ring to the Octagon. Seven months after he beat Heath Herring in his UFC debut, Nogueira submitted Tim Sylvia and won the UFC heavyweight interim belt. After this fight, Minotauro stayed away from the Octagon for ten months. Two weeks before his return to dispute the title with Mir, Minotauro contracted a staph infection and entered the Octagon as a shadow of the man fans are used to seeing and lost by TKO for the first time in his career.
But Minotauro doesn’t give up. The Robocop from Bahia recovered from the infection and a subsequent knee surgery and trained harder than ever to meet the toughest challenge of his UFC career, face the king of the Octagon, Randy Couture, in his homeland of Portland. Eight months after the worst defeat of his career, Minotauro returned in much better shape and left no doubt as he soundly beat Couture by unanimous decision.
Brock Lesnar
After returning in style and defeating Randy Couture in his own hometown, Minotauro dreams about taking the heavyweight belt back in a historical fight against the current champion Brock Lesnar.
“It would be a pretty busy fight. If it fell to the ground I can’t stop with that monster over me. I have to move my hips all the time, to not allow him to use his weight over me, and must attempt submissions all the time. One time the submission will happen. It’s going to be an unforgettable battle and I’ll do anything I can to beat him and get this belt,” promised Minotauro. It is hard to doubt the word of someone who has overcome opponents such as a truck, Bob Sapp, Cro Cop and Couture. After all, we are talking about the Brazilian Rocky Balboa…
Minoland
The trademark of Minotauro Nogueira is not the big heart, the great ground skills or amazing capacity to absorb punishment, but his lateness, which is famous among his trainers and teammates!
According to former BTT leader Mario Sperry, Minotauro holds the world record of missing airplanes in the same day: Three. “I was invited to referee a submission event in New York, the plane was scheduled at 11am, but I woke up at 10. They rescheduled it to 3pm in another airport (50km from there), but I decided to stop to eat some Japanese food (I love it) and ended up missing the second airplane. Then I had to come back to another flight scheduled in the first airport and missed the third flight!”
Mario Sperry used to say that the Nogueira brothers were born in ‘Minoland’, a world where clocks are forbidden. His coach Luiz Alves remembers one particular evening, “It was 8 o’clock and everybody was waiting for Rodrigo in the academy. I called him to ask where he was and he said, ‘start to warm up everybody, I´ll be with you guys soon.’ Then I asked ‘where are you?’ And he answered ‘I’m in the airport in Salvador, the plane to Rio is leaving in few minutes.’ Rio is a three-hour flight from Salvador!”
Anderson thanks Minotauro
One of the most important features of Rodrigo Minotauro is his big heart. Surrounded by many friends Minotauro is always ready to help anyone who asks for his support. “His only defect is not being able to say no. Actually, he had to go to a psychologist to learn how to use this word,” says Luiz Alves, his Muay Thai coach since 2000. It is because of Minotauro that Anderson Silva, the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world, is not retired. “When I left Chute Boxe, Rudimar [Fedrigo] prohibited Pride to allow me to fight in Japan,” says Anderson. “He said if I fight in there, Wanderlei would leave. I had four children to support by that time and I was considering stopping fighting to get another job, when Minotauro helped me putting me to fight in Korea and later Pride again. That’s why I consider Rodrigo like a brother, if it were not for him I would have retired.”
The Brazilian Rocky Balboa
One of the most important features of Antonio Rodrigo ‘Minotauro’ Nogueira is his amazing capacity to absorb punishment. “I’m a big fan of Rodrigo. Not only for his amazing capacity to absorb punches, but also for his calmness to keep calm and turn the fight, submitting the opponent,” says Wanderlei Silva, another fighter famous for never giving up.
Asked how he developed his capacity of absorbing punches Minotauro said, “I think that this happens because I train boxing since a very young age. Also because of the training at BTT, where there was training with many heavyweight athletes and I had to absorb many punches. All this contributed,” he explains.
