It fast became another defining moment in Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) lore, which is a nice way of saying it would make plenty of people avert their eyes.
A little over two years ago, while fighting in Toronto, Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira's right arm was broken during a submission hold, an incident that caused thousands in the arena to gasp and generated a half-million views when footage was posted on YouTube.
“It didn’t really hurt,” Nogueira said.
No surprise there, really.
When he was growing up, in Brazil, he was run over by a lorry at age 11, which left him in a coma for a week, on a breathing apparatus for two months and with severe damage to his right lung, diaphragm and liver.
He had been attending his cousin’s birthday party and playing near the lorry with some other boys when the vehicle backed over him.
“He just ran over my body,” Nogueira said.
Nogueira, 37, not only survived, but thrived. In fact, he now gets run over for a living.
Nogueira, one of the true warhorses of the theatrically brutal mixed-martial arts pantheon, will face American Roy Nelson in the main event of UFC Fight Night at du Arena on April 11, a fight that is sure to be a contrast in style and substance.
Both are ranked in the top 10 in the UFC heavyweight division, though their backgrounds could not be more different, right down to their ring personas.
Nelson, nicknamed “Big Country”, is a beefy Las Vegas native who looks like he took a wrong turn at the bowling alley. For a while, he used to play Weird Al Yankovich’s self-deprecating Eat It as his theme music when entering the ring, which seems apt. He looks like he came to UFC after too many stops at KFC and he uses the everyman mojo to great benefit.
“I like Roy Nelson because the casual fan can relate,” said Mohammed Al Hosani, a 29-year-old Emirati who occasionally serves as an MMA television analyst. “He doesn’t have the typical fighter build. People who like to sit [around] on the couch can relate.”
Nogueira, on the other hand, looks like a Greek statue, with a few extra battle scars etched in his marbled anatomy. OK, more than a few.
“It’s just the Brazilian tan,” Nelson said, laughing. “Darker guys always look more sculpted.”
Nogueira, who fought for nine years in Japan before moving to UFC, is a veteran’s veteran in a savage industry.
“He’s been through the wars,” Al Hosani said. “He’s absolutely a legend in the sport.”
Both for his prowess, which helped him craft a record of 34 wins, eight losses and one draw, and his back story.
Nogueira was involved in martial arts as a young boy, but dove in deep after the lorry accident, using the sport as part of his rehab.
“After that, I took it more seriously,” Nogueira said. “I think the martial arts helped me to be stronger of mind.”
No question, his pain threshold is off the charts. Over and over in his career, he has withstood several rounds of cringe-inducing, punishing abuse, only to wear down his foe at the end.
“I have a lot of heart in my fight style,” he said. “I fight like I am running a marathon. I have a lot of endurance. That is the strategy of my fights.”
Nelson, also 37, has a heavy right hand, a wrestling background and can dish it out with anybody in his division. Of course, fighting is only part of the UFC equation, where the octagon also serves as a stage of an entirely different sort.
“We are basically glorified rock star stunt men,” Nelson said. “You feed off the crowd. You are trying to put on a show and also trying to win. There are a whole bunch of different elements you are trying to put together.
“If I was to compare it to American football, it’s like the two-minute warning [when the game nears the end]. That’s how intense it is. If it was basketball, it’s the last 10 seconds. Or in regular football, it’s like going to penalty kicks. That’s what makes the best part of MMA – you really don’t know what’s going to happen.”
The sport’s growing global popularity is fairly easy to explain, just as the competition is simple to grasp on a rudimentary basis: two men enter a confined space and one of them leaves.
In the event that nobody submits or becomes incapacitated – the kindest term we could conjure – a points system akin to boxing determines the winner. Nelson speaks derisively about tactical fighters who attempt to outmanoeuvre their opponent, amass points and then play defence. His broad plan is a bit less subtle.
“Layman’s terms? Just go out and give 110 per cent,” Nelson said.
“Leave it all out there. You don’t go to try to pick and choose. Go out and finish the fight.
“You try to put on a show for the fans, and that’s the format to build a good fan base. You don’t want to think, ‘I don’t know if I am better than him, so I outpointed him’.”
Nobody buys UFC tickets expecting to watch ballet.
“You try to figure out who is the best and, at the same time, it is also a car wreck,” Nelson said. “You’re like, ‘What’s going to happen? Is something really bad going to happen, and is that guy going to walk out’?”
Since entertainment is a huge part of the equation, many wrestlers have alter egos. Since joining UFC, Nelson has grown a flowing mullet and a thick beard, that hardly embodies the slick Las Vegas stereotype. But it fits the Big Country image. “This is all since I joined UFC,” he said, pointing at his hair. “Re-branding.”
Nogueira has had the same nickname since he was 14, and there was nothing calculated about it. He was training with a man who excitedly called home and told his wife, “I am not going to make it home for dinner. I am training this kid who is like a minotaur.”
A minotaur is a mythological Greek beast that is half man, half bull. In MMA circles, Minotauro Nogueira became hugely popular in Brazil and Japan.
“It is a strong name,” Nogueira said, grinning. “I don’t complain.”
“When you fight on Saturday and everybody is talking about you on Monday, you know you are doing a good thing,” Nelson said.
As for his battles inside the octagon, Nelson (20-9) began comparatively late.
He has practised martial arts all his life and eventually began training other fighters in Las Vegas, but with a wife and son, something needed to change because he was not earning nearly enough.
“Working with guys and trying to pay the bills, it was like, ‘Hey, can I pay the rent?’ We were kind of butting heads,” Nelson said.
“I knew I was beating them up in the training room, so I thought, ‘If you are not going to help me out, I will help myself out by taking it from you’.
“They were the fools. I was not going to get bullied any more.”
In 2009, Nelson got his big break when he won the 10th season of The Ultimate Fighter, the reality TV show that awards a UFC fight contract to the winner.
He will now face a guy who is built like a tank and who barely blinked when had his arm broken in a bout.
Not to mention that lorry incident when he was a kid.
Nelson was reminded of the latter as Nogueira sat a few feet away.
In terminology better suited to Las Vegas, what kind of odds did he give himself against a man mountain who could not be stopped by a two-ton lorry when he was just an 11-year-old stripling?
“That was a long time ago,” Nelson said.
Both fighters smiled.
In the brutal business of mixed-martial arts, laughter might be the best defence of all.
selling@thenational.ae
Follow us on twitter at @SprtNationalUAE
