Minotauro: ‘New Zealand vs. Brazil is the New Brazilian Top Team vs. Chute Boxe’

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Ultimate Fighting Championship Athlete Relations Ambassador and former UFC and Pride Fighting Championships heavyweight king Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira is working from “Fight Island” for a total of 45 days.

From his hotel room in Abu Dhabi, Nogueira talked exclusively with Sherdog Brazilian correspondent Marcelo Alonso.

Very impressed with the growth of New Zealand’s mixed martial arts scene, Nogueira compared Israel Adesanya and Alexander Volkanovski's team, City Kickboxing, to the old Brazilian Top Team rival of Chute Boxe.

“I got really impressed about all the bad blood involved in the backstage of this fight. New Zealand fans are so passionate. And that was not invented to sell fights. It was 100 percent genuine. It truly [reminds me] of Pride times when we had the noisy Chute Boxe as opponent.”

Nogueira also talked about next steps of Paulo Costa as well as Adesanya and gave his predictions about the next two confrontations between Russia vs. USA in UFC: Khabib Nurmagomedov vs. Justin Gaethje and Petr Yan vs. Aljamain Sterling.