“I played his game for almost three rounds”...
... said a weary but happy Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira after his fight with Tim Sylvia Saturday night in the main event of UFC 81. “He played my game for two minutes and I won the fight.”
In mixed martial arts that’s all it takes, but when it comes to Nogueira’s guillotine choke submission win over Sylvia to win the interim UFC heavyweight championship, it means so much more. And it has nothing to do with belts or recognition as the top heavyweight in the game, an accolade he has worn before as the former PRIDE heavyweight champion. For Nogueira, his snatch of victory from the jaws of defeat epitomizes everything good about the sport and about the strength of the human spirit.
It’s not the first time he’s done it either. Go back to his 2002 fight with Bob Sapp, where he was driven into the canvas headfirst by an opponent outweighing him by 100 pounds before coming back to win by submission. Or take a look at his 2003 win over Mirko Cro Cop, which saw him take a horrific first round beating before taking out the Croatian striker with an armbar in the second round. More importantly, look at his childhood, when he survived being in a coma for four days after being run over by a truck at home in Brazil.
He’s a survivor. But it looked like he had run out of miracles against Sylvia, whose resurgence continued in the first ten minutes of the bout as he peppered Nogueira with shots from all angles, punctuated everything with flush right hands, and avoided ‘Minotauro’s efforts to bring the fight to the mat.
“I took about one or two rounds to get a nice distance,” said Nogueira in the understatement of the year. “He’s got a very good right hand, he’s heavy, he’s got a good reach, he’s got a good sprawl, so it was a lot of trouble to take him down, and I kept trying.”
If Nogueira is still standing, he will keep trying, and that’s trouble for any heavyweight on the planet today. Sylvia knew it too, but he couldn’t avoid the finish.
“I grew up watching him and I’ve seen that happen to him I don’t know how many times,” said Sylvia. “I just got lazy.”
And when Nogueira was finally able to secure a takedown in the third round, the playing field had changed, and two hours of pain suddenly turned to euphoria as he sunk in the guillotine choke that earned him the victory.
“Finally, I could make a good submission and win the fight,” said Nogueira, whose legacy in the game is not only secure with this latest victory, it’s enhanced, and the rest of 2008 should be interesting for the latest Brazilian to earn the rank of champion in the UFC
UFC.com
