by Marcelo Alonso The amazing brazilian audience who bought pay per view saturday night to see live from Saitama Arena (Tokyo) the 2nd round of the Pride Grand Prix could not believe the way Pedro Rizzo lost to Sergei Kharitonov. Considered the no 1 heavyweight MMA striker from Brazil, Marco Rua’s pupil wasn’t even close to the man who knocked out names like Tank Abbott, Andrey Orlovsky and Josh Barnett in UFC. ‘I don?t like to give excuses, Kharitonov fought a great fight and deserved the win, but what makes me upset is knowing that in good condition I could make a much better fight against him. The problem is not the fact that I’m out of the ring for almost 2 years, but the lack of sparring partners. To tell you the truth, I just trained with sparring partners in the week before the event when Peter Aerts and Marco Ruas arrived in Rio to help me’, explained Rizzo right after the event on the bus on the way to the hotel. The following day at breakfast, Rizzo received an invitation to train at Chute Boxe Team in Curitiba. ‘Pedro Rizzo is an amazing fighter and also an example of loyalty to his master Ruas, our doors are open to help them whenever they need’, said Rudimar Fedrigo to Ruas and Beto Leitao. The invitation ended up in a proposal to exchange atheletes between Ruas Vale-Tudo and Chute Boxe. ‘They need to train Wrestling and Pedro needs sparring partnerss so we will start to work together’, explained the wrestler Roberto Leitao, already planning a two week trip with Pedro Rizzo to Curitiba.On the returning flight to Rio de Janeiro, Rizzo was looking much more confident. ‘After Curitiba I’ll spend at least one month training with Peter in Holland or I will bring him to Brazil. Now, more than ever I’m focused to get into my best shape to fight in the Pride GP and show to japanese fans the real Pedro Rizzo’.
