Antônio “Bigfoot” Silva Is Ready For His Return To American Soil

With his US suspension over Antônio “Bigfoot” Silva (13-1) is scheduled to face Fabricio Werdum on November 7 as part of the “Strikeforce: Fedor vs. Rogers” show on CBS.

In a recent interview with Tatame.com, “Bigfoot” talks about training for his fight against Werdum and concentrating on his stand-up game. He also gives his thoughts about who will win between Fedor Emelianenko and Brett Rogers.

Tatame: What’s your focus on the trainings? Antônio Silva: I trained a bit of everything. I enhance my Jiu-Jitsu and emphasized standing up with Katel Kubis, who helped me a lot, with Thiago Silva, Luis Cane, training Wrestling… I’m prepared to be back to United States. I’ll respect Werdum before and after the fight, but I’ll get in the cage for the knockout or submission. I think my Jiu-Jitsu is as good as his, and I’m prepared to be three rounds on the ground or striking, whatever it comes.

Tatame: Fedor debut on November 7 too. How do you think it’s going to be his fight against Brett Rogers?

Antônio Silva: Brett has a heavy hand and he proved it with a lot of knockouts. If the hand comes in, it drops, but his game doesn’t fit with Fedor’s, because he comes very open, he hits very open. But that’s theory, practice is another thing. I think Fedor wins, not because he’s the number one, but by Fedor’s game. You can see on Brett’s fight against Arlovski, that he comes very open. If you notice him, he didn’t correct that open game and he gets vulnerable. Fedor is strategical and he will see that. He annulled Minotauro’s ground game, Cro Cop’s kicks game… I think that he’ll train to hit on the line and take to the ground on the first chance, because no one ever saw Brett fighting on the ground.

During last weekends UFC 104 event, Silva talks about supporting Lyoto Machida’s corner but, like many others who have spoken out about the result, feels that Mauricio “Shogun” Rua won the fight.

Tatame: What’s your opinion about the fight between Lyoto and Shogun? Antônio Silva: I was supporting Lyoto Machida, even to happen a rematch against Thiago Silva, who’s always with me. In my opinion, that decision should have been for Shogun. I don’t know where the judges were looking at, if they were drunk or if they were watching the tape of another fight. I don’t know what they were doing, but I know that they weren’t watching that fight. If you put someone who have never seen a fight before and put in front of the television to watch that fight, definitely he will say that Shogun won. That’s good to other fighters see that now is Shogun, but tomorrow can be anyone. Unfortunately, we’re in judges’ hands. We don’t know what’s on their minds. Shogun must have done a hard work, trained a lot, and if there was another round he would fight, He was really focused. Besides I was supporting Lyoto, I think Shogun must have won.

Translated from Portuguese.

With his US suspension over Antônio “Bigfoot” Silva (13-1) is scheduled to face Fabricio Werdum on November 7 as part of the “Strikeforce: Fedor vs. Rogers” show on CBS. In a recent interview with Tatame.com, “Bigfoot” talks about training for his fight against Werdum and concentrating on his stand-up game. He also gives his [...]

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