Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira Interview 06/06/2010

After Rogerio Nogueira’s victory at UFC 114, his twin brother Rodrigo Minotauro Nogueira turns his focus to the UFC return. In an exclusive interview to TATAME at San Diego, California, the heavyweight spoke about his return, commented Brock Lesnar’s return against Shane Carwin and UFC Fan Expo.

Do you know when will be your next fight?

I hope it’s soon. There’s nothing scheduled, we had Rogério’s fight this weekend, a hard fight, he did a good fight, worked on his Wrestling on the second round, won the first one, in my opinion, sure won the third and he made his game… It was a great fight! The focus was only on Rogério and now we’re starting to focus on my training, I’ll do a new camp for this next fight. Today we trained ground game, we’ve been training with kimonos, here in San Diego, two or three times a week. We started the training with the kimono and we end it without, we’re trying to improve my Jiu-Jitsu. There’s nothing scheduled yet, but I’m hoping to fight soon, I’m anxious and I have good expectations for this next battle.

Do you have any idea of who could be your next opponent? I heard that Frank Mir, a guy you’d like to fight again, may face Gonzaga next…

I don’t know anything yet. We are waiting and I’ll fight against whoever they tell me to. I’ll try to do my best and got off there with a win. I’m waiting for some results, and I’ll way for them to say something.

Brock Lesnar vs. Shane Carwin... Who will win this?

Man, I think Carwin is more aggressive, has a better hand, is coming through a good phase on his career and I believe in his game. But, for the future, I can see other athletes coming closer and I think this belt will end on Brazilian’s hands, maybe Junior dos Santos and me trying to win this belt, and I really want to make it (laughs).

Do you believe that, until the end of the year, your brother has a chance to dispute the belt on the 205 division?

Rogério has been having good results, he beat Banha, Jason Brilz… I believe that a good fight would be one between my brother and Rashad Evans or even Forrest Griffin. In 2005 Rogério did the best fight of that year against Shogun and that’s another fight I’d really like to see, because Rogério has improved a lot since then on his trade of punches and on his ground game as well. This would be a great fight. The one on 2005 was, so I think it deserves a second round between the two of them. They did a great fight on Pride, and they can do it all again on UFC.

Would you like to send a message to your fans?

I would like to thank everyone from TATAME, everyone who supports us. We just created a new website, which is www.minotaurosports.com. We did a great meeting with José Aldo, Anderson Silva, Wanderlei Silva, Ricardo Arona, everyone there, together, at UFC Fan Expo. It’s good to have great names like that on an event. I’d like to thank everyone that went there. It was a great event, successful. I’d really like to thank the presence of Brazilian fans on UFC Fan Expo, asking for autographs, that’s really rewarding for us.