I keep seeing that damnable gif Antonio Rodrigo "Minotauro”'s arm getting cracked in half and it's really difficult to deal with. I think anyone who watched Pride had to remember that Nog was just a super-hero. The Sapp fight was like watching something mythical. Sapp ended up being nothing special in MMA because he didn't really take it seriously, but let's not forget the guy beat up Ernesto Hoost twice, one of the greatest kickboxers of all time.
I'll never forget how I felt watching that Nog/Sapp fight. It was like all the years of jiu jitsu would've just been meaningless if Nog had lost. But he gutted out a power bomb and getting tossed around like a rag doll only to come back and finish the beast.
And then, as if that wasn't bad enough, he had to go and fight Semmy Schilt, the guy who would go on to become the four time K-1 WGP champ!
He had finished Coleman right after he seemed at the start of a renaissance in his career when he toppled everyone to win the inaugural Pride GP. He used his boxing and jiu jitsu to make Herring seem like an amateur. He did an incredible chain of submissions on Enson Inoue.
He went out and got the crap kicked out of him (literally) by Cro Cop but came back and found a way to win. If ever there was the definition of just plain toughness and heart, it was Nogueira. When he lost to Fedor it was like Thor fighting the Hulk. We knew Fedor was something special and if anyone deserved to beat him, it was a fellow mythic God of the Heavyweight pantheon.
Add to this that he was just a likable guy. Nobody had a bad thing to say about him. When his team BTT was feuding with Chute Boxe he stayed out of it and maintained friendships with guys on both sides. He was always hungry to get better, journeying to Cuba to work on his boxing with the national team. To me, he's like the MMA Joe Louis.
Then he comes to the UFC and ends up beating Sylvia to become champ, proving he's got what it takes and defending the Pride banner stateside.
But then Mir...first a TKO, then a submission. A bad submission. A submission on the greatest finisher in the history of the sport.
It's nothing against Mir. He's a good fighter and earned his victories and is a great heavyweight, but it's like when Ken Norton broke Ali's jaw. It's hard to see the standard bearer of jiu jitsu, Pride and dogged determination go down like that. Seeing the look on his face change as Mir put it in deep was just hard to watch.
Congrats to Mir, but I weep for our fallen hero. :_-(
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