‘Minotuaro’ Reveals Multiple Eye Surgeries Shortened Career

Former Pride Fighting Championships heavyweight champion and Ultimate Fighting Championship interim king Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira has spoken publicly for the first time about a right eye injury that has plagued him throughout his career.

The Brazilian held an event for media and special guests on Wednesday night in a Rio de Janeiro restaurant, where he aired his documentary titled “Minotauro,” which captures his early life growing up in Brazil to the day he announced his retirement from the sport of mixed martial arts.

Fight fans of Nogueira have probably heard about the time the former champion was run over by a truck, which almost killed him. The injury meant he was hospitalized for almost a year and he carries a large scar on his back as a reminder of the injury.

Now, the Brazilian has revealed that he was hit in the eye with a pair of scissors at the age of four and never fully recovered his eyesight (transcript courtesy of MMAFighting.com).

“I had six surgeries when I was a kid, two when I was teenager, and two recent ones,” Nogueira told MMA Fighting. “I implanted an intraocular contact lens, and if you poke me in the eye really hard it moves. Imagine how many punches I took… I had to put it back in place all the time.”

Nogueira described one of the toughest fights of his career, in which his eye injury hindered him the most was against Mirko Filipovic in 2003. In the fight, the Croatian inflicted a significant amount of damage to the Brazilian and knocked him down with a stinging left kick in the final seconds of the first round. Nogueira was able to regain his composure and come back in the second round to win via armbar.

“It was a problem in some fights,” Nogueira said. “This fight with ‘Cro Cop’ I couldn’t see anything with my right eye.”

Nogueira said he had to undergo surgery two months before one of his MMA fights, but still managed to pass all the pre-fight medicals before his fight.

“It was two fights: the fight itself, and the fight to be able to see,” Nogueira laughed. “That’s one of the reasons why I stopped fighting. My last fight, with (Stefan) Struve, he poked me in the eye several times. If you watch the fight, I’m trying to secure a single leg and he putting his fingers in my face, and that disturbed me a lot. That’s one of the reasons why I stopped fighting because it hurt a lot.”

Nogueira finally retired from the sport in 2015 with an impressive 34-10-1-1 record. The documentary detailing his life will premiere in the coming weeks in Brazil.