text and photos by Marcelo Alonso/Team TatameAfter following Wanderlei’s steps during his last week of training, it was easy to understand why he is such a top fighter. Besides being totally focused, training twice a day, the Pride middleweight champion has a group of top professionals working for him including physical trainers, a nutrition specialist, someone charged with taking care of marketing and press business. a massage therapy specialist to care for his muscles after every heavy training session at Chute Boxe Dojo. ‘I’m a professional from the fighting world and I’m very well paid for doing my job. To make the best out of me, I need to have those top professionals working together with me’ justified Wanderlei. Always very calm and ready to attend to fans and journalists, Mr. Silva totally changes in the week before a fight, when he hates to give interviews. ‘I think it’s important to be totally focused in the days before the fight’, explained the Axe Murder, after declining an invitation from an important local TV program, in order to not miss the last training session at Chute Boxe headquarters, last friday. After an hour of heavy training with five different sparring partners, Wanderlei told us about his strategy against Yoshida: ‘My main goal is a knock out as always, but if the fight goes to the ground I’m much better prepared. I trained a lot of submissions using the gi’, guaranteed the champion. Even being very focused on Yoshida, Silva does not hide his desire to fight the only man who knocked him out. ‘I’m willing to fight Belfort again, He talks too much. This fight will not go thru to the end. One of us will be knocked out’, said the Chute Boxer. Asked to point four semifinalists Wanderlei didn’t hesitate: ‘Myself, ‘Shogun’, Vovchanchyn and Randleman’.
