Sherdog.com: You and Pedro Rizzo (Pictures) are great friends and he is going to face Roman Zentsov (Pictures) trying to rehab himself from the defeat in his PRIDE debut. What do you expect in his fight?

Nogueira: Pedro is one of the most technical fighters that I ever saw. He already knocked out Josh Barnett (Pictures), who is a former UFC champion. In my opinion he won the first fight against Randy Couture (Pictures); the second he really lost. Pedro already won against a lot of former champions, already knocked out Andrei Arlovski (Pictures), who is the actual champion. He has a good record, unfortunately in PRIDE he didn’t find himself. He had a lot of infections in his leg. I saw his training and he was with a big infection. I had an infection in December and this thing really takes out your stamina. I think it was one of the reasons that I didn’t fight in December. It was a big infection behind my knee and I had already alerted PRIDE organizers that I maybe wouldn’t fight. After one week I was better, they managed for me to fight against Fabricio Werdum (Pictures), but he hurt his foot. Coming back to Pedro, he didn’t find himself in that fight, he didn’t enter well. But I know that he fights much better than that and I am sure that he will put his name as one of the best in the heavyweights. He is dangerous; has good takedowns; has an efficient ground game; is good in the stand-up game; his kicks I can’t even tell about it. He is a great fighter, can do a little bit of everything.

Sherdog.com: This year will we see your brother, Antonio Rogerio Nogueira (Pictures), dispute the title against Wanderlei Silva (Pictures)?

Nogueira: I think that Rogerio is a great name to be in this Grand Prix because last year he was the only one who did a good show against Mauricio Rua (Pictures); that was the best fight of the GP. He had everything to represent us in the middleweights; there will be a lot of fighters from this category and I think he should be one of them. Unfortunately it was not this time, but I think that PRIDE should put him to fight in May. Rogerio is well prepared: he is in the better phase of his life, is trading well in the stand-up position, he is with a very sharpened ground game. All his fights, he does a little bit of everything. He is a complete fighter and has to fight all the time. If he fights against Wanderlei, respecting Wanderlei’s capacity, but with certainty he [would] win against him.

Sherdog.com: You organized two editions of your own event, Minotauro Fights. When is going to be the next edition?

Nogueira: We are planning to make the next event between March 15 and March 20. There will probably be a tournament of four fighters in the 85-kg category. Our idea is to make a champion in this 85-kg weight class, after that we will make a heavyweight tournament. But we will make an 85 kg first.

Sherdog.com: You didn’t have a long career in sport jiu-jitsu, like Ze Mario Sperry (Pictures) and Murilo Bustamante (Pictures), for example, even because you are younger. But you have the most efficient jiu-jitsu in the MMA world. How did you get it?

Nogueira: When I started to fight, I lived in Bahia and it was very distant from Rio, so I didn’t compete a lot. After I went to live in the U.S., training only with my students, and didn’t manage to make a long career in jiu-jitsu. But I used to do well. In all the tournaments I placed in the first positions. Murilo and Ze Mario were from the Carlson Gracie Team, they had all that structure behind them. In MMA I lasted a little bit to adapt myself. I went to the U.S. to train. I trained with “Conan” Silveira. After that came the World Extreme Fighting guys. The guys that used to fight in that event came to train with us, do a ground work, I didn’t adapt myself well because my jiu-jitsu was too much gi-oriented. Than like six months passed and because I already trained boxing, I didn’t have fear of receiving a punch, so I managed to adapt my jiu-jitsu to MMA. Nowadays I do this very well.

Sherdog.com: Any final messages?

Nogueira: I would like to thank my fans for the support. In 2006 I want to compete the whole year. For the people who like our work, keep looking after me, my brother and my team: the Brazilian Top Team. Once more I thank you for the support and I expect to have a year full of victories.