ED SOARES: "HE COULD EVEN BE A HEAVYWEIGHT"
Ed Soares talks about Anderson Silva and his stable of fighters. Would Anderson take a fight with 205 champ Forrest Griffin? Will he continue at 205? Could he ever fight at heavyweight? Was Nogueira disrespected by Randy’s refusal to fight him? How did he get along with Mir while they filmed the new season of The Ultimate Fighter? What's up with Paulo’s comeback, Rampage’s current struggles and Lyoto’s path to a title. Ed also discussed how he came to own Sinister Brand clothing...interesting story.
His thoughts on Anderson's debut at light heavyweight...
"I knew he was going to come in well prepared. Anderson walks around at 220 pounds. Just his physique and the way his body is, even at 206 pounds, he still looked kind of skinny because that's just the way his physique is. That's just his body type. Who knows, he could even be a heavyweight maybe at some point in time."
"When I was in Brazil about two weeks before his fight right around July 4th, he was walking around at 215, 217 pounds and he was training with a 20 pound weight vest on because so many people, even he was a little bit concerned about how the extra weight would affect his speed and agility."
"He took the precautions and took the extra steps in his training to make sure that the weight wasn't going to make that big of a difference in his speed and agility and it was obvious by the punch you could see that the speed wasn't affected and also his power was much more powerful."
"He felt very comfortable at this weight."
"He wants to be involved in the biggest fights of MMA history. He wants every fight of his to become a historical fight."
"He wants to be involved in fights the world wants to see."
His thoughts on GSP fighting Anderson Silva...
"I think Georges St. Pierre is an incredible fighter, but I think Georges St. Pierre needs to prove himself a little bit in the welterweight division. He still hasn't had a successful title defense. That's great that people talk about it, but I don't really feel he deservest that yet. That's how I feel. Go defend your title a few times and then we'll talk."
On Nogueira's experience as a coach on The Ultimate Fighter...
"He liked the experience. He said that at times, it was a little bit of a pain in the ass, but overall, he enjoyed the experience. I think the thing he disliked about it the most is not being able to fight for such a long period of time."
His thoughts on Couture not wanting to fight Noguiera...
"In a wierd way, I kind of get where Randy's coming from....if he were to lose to Fedor, he lost against supposedly the most dominant man on the planet. If he lost to Antonio...you know, styles make fights and I think that potentially a fight against Nogueira could be stylistically less advantageous for Randy in comparison to someone like Fedor."
"I don't really take it as disrespect because Randy Couture is not the kind of guy that disrespects people. He's such a great person inside and outside of the ring."
Pretty good and long interview with Ed Soares talking about all of his fighters. Here's the audio interview:
PMR 7: ED SOARES
