text and photos by Marcelo Alonso Photographers and journalists from all over the world ‘battled’ a huge group of fans for the seats of a totally packed auditorium for the weigh ins for Pride’s final round of the GP this past saturday. Everybody was anxious to see the first meeting (face to face) between Ricardo Arona and Wanderlei Silva. Besides representing their respective teams BTT and Chute Boxe, Arona and Wanderlei had a personal problem backstage at Pride 16, and since then they have always wanted to resolve it in the ring.After Igor Vovchanchyn and Nakamura, Dutchman Overeem and Mauricio ‘Shogun’ weighed in at less than 93kg without any problem for the GP.Finally Wanderlei and Arona were invited and suddenly total silence descended on the room. ‘I’m very well prepared. I came to beat Wanderlei and win the tournament’, said Arona after weigh in. Wanderlei answered: ‘I’m in very good shape. I came prepared to give a great show to the fans. Tomorrow I will give you two knock outs’, promised Wanderlei, stepping up in front of Arona for the most awaited moment of the evening. The Chute Boxe group started to scream their tradiotnal chants ‘Yeah yeah yeah Chute Boxe, huh!’. The two fighters stared down for about 5 seconds while the excited audience buzzed. Suddenly Wanderlei said: ‘I’ll break you up tomorrow’ and Arona answered looking him in his eyes: ‘We are going to see tomorrow in the ring’. The tension could be cut with a knife!Fans, journalists and promoters applauded and they separated. After that Sakakibara and Takada posed with the belt between both fighters and the exciting meeting was over.
