Q: Looking back at your fight career, if you could choose one fight every MMA fan should see, which fight would you choose and why?
Ricardo: “My favorite fight is still my very first fight in Pride. I won and I realized I could do this (MMA) for a living. Sometimes you don’t know if you can really do something. I just signed on for it and I trained for it. There were 50,000 people in the arena. That was my favorite performance.
“As far as submissions, I would say my first fight back (with the UFC), the guillotine against Rob Yundt. Coming back Super Bowl weekend, with it being such a big card with Brock Lesnar and Frank Mir as the main event, that was a pretty cool submission. So I guess that’s one of my favorites too.”
Q: Is there a fight you never got during your career you wish you did?
“There was never really anyone in particular I wanted to fight. I am thrilled to be a part of the sport. I love being a part of the sport. I still love it and I was able to walk away loving it. A lot of people walk away from professional sports not liking it anymore. I always miss it. It is still tough to be in the cage, when I corner Frankie (Edgar), knowing I won’t ever get to fight again. I was still very happy that I was able to do it.”
Q: What is Frankie like to work with and how long have you been together?
“When Frankie first came to train with us, after his first loss against (Gray) Maynard, and him and Kris McCray wanted to come train jiu-jitsu with me because they really wanted to improve their ground game. I was sitting with him and Frankie said, ‘I want to be the UFC champion.’
"I just looked at him and said, ‘Shouldn’t you be thinking about going to 145?’ But he never second-guessed himself. The intensity he brings to every practice, the strength and conditioning sessions, I’ve never seen someone train as hard as that kid. He came to me wanting to learn jiu-jitsu but I have learned a lot from him.
Q: Can you put into words your feelings when Frankie won the UFC championship?
“As far as being a coach, nothing will ever beat that first BJ Penn fight. We all believed Frankie could do it. No one believed in him, it was only the people around him that believed. So it was this close-knit inner circle and we all believed. And then he started to believe, so it was a great moment.”
Q: What’s the most amazing thing you’ve seen in regards to the growth of MMA since the beginning of your career?
“There have been so many moments, Back in the day I couldn’t even tell anyone I trained jiu-jitsu. My dad was embarrassed to say I trained in jiu-jitsu, with that reputation it had back in the day. My first time around in the UFC the weigh-ins where in little ballrooms and stuff.
"Even the first UFC in Vegas I fought on, they were in a ballroom, a bigger ballroom but still a ballroom. And then I came back in 2008 and the weigh-ins were half of the arena. Each time they are bigger and bigger. And this last fight for Frankie, my dad called me from Brazil saying he was watching the weigh-ins live on open TV, which is like cable TV.
“It just keeps getting bigger and bigger and it’s not gonna stop. Its like a tsunami, you can only get out of the way. It’s impressive and it’s great to be a part of it.
Postscript: At his Gracie system gym in New Jersey Almeida trains Edgar, fellow former lightweight champion Eddie Alvarez and TUF winner Cory Anderson.
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