August 27, 2011 marks the UFC’s first show in Brazil in quite some time. It also marks a first in the long and illustrious career of former PRIDE and UFC Heavyweight Champion Antonio Rodrigo “Minotauro” Nogueira: his first professional fight in his homeland. It’s also his return to fighting in general after an eighteen month layoff following his February 2010 knockout loss to Cain Velasquez. His opponent is Brendan Schaub, a prospect that the UFC holds in high regards. In all likelihood, Nogueira will not win this fight, and if his recent fights are any sort of arbiter he will be knocked out within the first two rounds.
Being able to predict a knockout loss for Nogueira is something that was unheard of until Frank Mir put him down in December 2008. Prior to that, he had been 31-4-1 and his only losses had been from decisions. Now, he has been finished in two of his last three fights by two men who are not exactly considered power punchers. This, to anyone remotely familiar with Big Nog’s history, is quite a precipitous decline for a man who once possessed an iron chin and could be considered the second greatest heavyweight of all-time.
In PRIDE Nogueira was the longtime heavyweight kingpin, becoming the promotion’s first heavyweight champion in November 2001 and holding the belt until a decision loss to Fedor Emelianenko, a man until recently considered by many to be the greatest fighter in the sport’s history. Nogueira was so dominant that he ran up a record of 18-3-1 in PRIDE, with two of those losses and the draw all coming to Emelianenko. The other loss was a 2006 split decision loss to Josh Barnett that he ended up avenging by winning a rematch three months later.
Nogueira ran the heavyweight gauntlet by being adept at two skills in a division where most men are only really good at one thing. He was an excellent boxer, having fought in the Pan American games and trained with the Cuban National Boxing team. His punches were solid while not being devastating, and his footwork was textbook with very few of the off balance or poorly set up strikes that many MMA fighters are known for. This worked in tandem with his Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. Nogueira is easily the greatest BJJ grappler and practitioner in heavyweight MMA history and will always be regarded as one of the best ever in the field, irrespective of weight class. His BJJ was legendary. On the ground, he would constantly transition from position to position, always looking for a way to finish. If he couldn’t get the triangle he would transition to the armbar, or maybe sweep and go for back control into a rear naked choke. Nogueira’s jiu jitsu skills have always been a thing of beauty. He used them to great effect in PRIDE, finishing the following list of legendary/memorable fighters by submission: Gary Goodridge( first round triangle choke), Mark Coleman (first round triangle armbar), Bob Sapp (second round armbar), Dan Henderson (third round armbar), Mirko Cro Cop (second round armbar), Heath Herring (second round anaconda choke). The Cro Cop victory is particularly notable as it was Mirko’s first loss of any sort in MMA after laying everything to waste in his previous nine fights and remained his only submission loss for seven years, until a submission from strikes against Nogueira protege Junior dos Santos in 2010.
In many ways, Nogueira’s style was similar to Muhammad Ali, particularly the 1970s era Ali. At that point in his career, Ali’s legs were gone and he had to rely heavily on the rope-a-dope routine to win, drawing his opponents into firefights over the first half of a fight to tire them out before unleashing his attack. Nogueira would do similar things. Against Bob Sapp, he allowed himself to get powerbombed on his head and beat on from the ground in order to wear the larger and stronger Sapp down before submitting him. Cro Cop unleashed a devastating head kick in the first round that almost finished the fight at the end of the first round, but Nogueira survived and landed a second round armbar. Dan Henderson ran out of gas in the third round after winning much of their match because he was expending a great deal of energy against the larger Nogueira and was submitted for his effort. Like Ali, this method even worked almost to the end of his career. Ali was able to withstand another beating from Joe Frazier in Manilla in 1975, but he never fully recovered. He survived Ken Norton in 1976 by winning the very last round of their fight and was able to beat Leon Spinks after losing badly to him a few months prior in 1977 and retired as champion, even though the signs of slippage were obvious to anyone who knew Ali. The comparable period for Nogueira would be his UFC stint. Against Heath Herring he was levelled with a head kick in the first round that nearly ended the fight, but he recovered to win a decision. Then he fought Tim Sylvia for the UFC Heavyweight Title. He was knocked down in the first and second rounds and nearly finished, but recovered enough to win in the third round with one of the best set-up and executed guillotine chokes I’ve ever seen. This victory gave Nogueira the distinction of being the only man to win the heavyweight titles in both PRIDE and the UFC. Although it was unknown at the time, in retrospect Big Nog should have retired then and there and sealed his legacy.
In 2008, Nogueira was TKOed by Frank Mir, an outcome no one expected. This was the man who withstood peak Cro Cop and fought Fedor Emelianenko thrice and was never finished. The loss was later blamed on a poor training camp and recovery from staph infection (much like Ali’s loss to Spinks was blamed on underestimating his foe and his 1980 comeback loss to Larry Holmes was blamed on an illness). In honesty, this outcome shouldn’t have been that surprising. Although it is true he was sick, Nogueira had been getting rocked badly in his two previous fights and when taken in conjunction with his illness, the finish made sense.
The illness reasoning made sense when Nogueira managed to come back in his next fight in 2009 and win an exciting, but convincing decision over fellow legend Randy Couture. This match showcased his stand up game, as well as his excellent grappling skills. He was able to transition and work for submissions in a way that hadn’t been seen in years and looked like the Minotauro Nogueira of old. As it turned out, this match and not the Mir fight was the aberration. Just like Ali had the Larry Holmes fight that made his decline explicit, Nogueira would have his.
In February 2010, he locked horns with Cain Velasquez. Most people expected Nogueira to work his jiu jitsu magic and make this a tough fight for the previously untested Cain, but things did not work out that way. In a stand up battle that lasted just over two minutes, Nogueira was badly knocked out. The punches he ate were solid, flush shots from the talented Velasquez, but in the past Nogueira was able to walk through those kinds of shots to at least try to pull guard. Instead, he was out cold.
Since then, he had a September 2010 rematch with Frank Mir cancelled due to multiple injuries requiring surgery and has taken on more of a training role, helping to get Junior dos Santos a title shot against Velasquez. Rumor has it that he is not even close to 100% heading into his fight with Brendan Schaub and recent pictures of him show Big Nog looking a bit out of shape, but he has been insistent that he gets the opportunity to fight in Brazil. In years past, this fight would have been a walk in the park for Nogueira. Schaub has decent takedowns, but his top game has a lot of holes. A BJJ expert like Nogueira should be able to work wonders off his back against Schaub. Schaub’s punches have a decent amount of power, but his technique is still very much a work in progress and exploitable for any of the top level heavyweights. The big problem here is that Nogueira’s chin is not what it once was and his reflexes have obviously diminished. If, and this is a big if, he can survive Schaub’s striking he could turn back time and win this fight in exciting fashion. If he can’t and he loses (especially if he does so badly), he should make this fight in his home country his last fight. His legacy as a fighter is secure as one of the all-time greats and he doesn’t need to let prospects that could never have touched him in his prime make their names off it. Even Ali got out after losing to a nobody named Trevor Berbick, but that is the last thing people think of when discussing his legacy. Even if Nogueira’s night and career end with a loss to Brendan Schaub, he should and will still be remembered as one of the greats MMA has ever seen.
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