Rodolfo Vieira has new fire in his heart going into his UFC Vegas 57 middleweight clash with Chris Curtis this Saturday at the UFC APEX.
” The Black Belt Hunter” was convinced that Vieira would not be able to return to the Octagon after his brain scans revealed a terrifying diagnosis. This occurred before Vieira’s fight against Wellington Turman in January. It indicated that Vieira had a congenital abnormality in his brain. It took weeks for Vieira to finally be cleared to resume his MMA career.
“Many asked me if there was any feeling, such as fainting or dizziness. ***,” Vieira explained to MMA Fighting. Vieira said that nothing happened and that I continued to live my regular life. I did the MRI because it’s been four years since my previous one and I needed to do it again, and that’s when doctors spotted that malformation and got worried. I was a little scared by the doctors and they asked for more .”
exams.
The UFC removed Vieira from his Turman fight, asking him to take further testing in Anaheim and Orlando. Vieira stated that it took “so long”. He said that waiting for Vieira’s health insurance to reimburse the cost meant six more weeks of waiting for results. So he paid for it all.
“When I left [and got cleared], my manager already called me asking when I wanted to fight again, so it was all worth it,” Vieira said. “Imagine waiting a month and a half for this result and not knowing what was going on? .”
Vieira received good news in the end, but admits he was expecting the opposite.
“I was trying to stay positive but I thought, ‘I’ll be ready if the worst comes,'” Vieira said. It was difficult for me. It was hard for me to return to jiu jitsu and have to continue teaching classes. I said, ‘F***, I didn’t want to teach jiu-jitsu now, I’m still healthy to fight for eight or nine more years and try to build something in MMA.’ Having to stop fighting at 32 would suck.
” It was great relief and I am very grateful for this chance God gave me. He’s made me go through this to, I don’t know, test my will, to see if that’s what I really wanted, and I saw how much I wanted to continue in this sport.”
The Brazilian middleweight now returns to the cage 11 months after submitting Dustin Stoltzfus with a rear-naked choke in Las Vegas. Curtis is now looking for his eighth consecutive victory, having defeated Phil Hawes (and Brendan Allen) in their two octagon fights.
Vieira laughed when
“[UFC] already tried to kill me.” Vieira laughed and said that he had already thrown a killer at me. Instead of giving me a grappler, someone that doesn’t hit that much on the feet so we can grapple, do some jiu-jitsu, at least on this first one back. But, ‘No, let’s see if he’s really good.’ [Laughs.]”
Vieira never stopped training and sparring while waiting for his MRI results, and said he never felt anything odd during the whole process, nor during his camp for UFC Vegas 57. His gameplan will not change for Saturday, as he’ll focus on choking Curtis out to improve to 4-1 under the UFC banner.
“Chris Curtis is a dangerous guy on the feet but I won’t go out like crazy to take him down,” he said. “I’ll stay on the feet for a moment and take him down at the right time.
” I am improving my feet movement and confidence. However, I don’t like to be on my feet as I have better chances of landing on the ground. He had greater chances of knocking me out on his feet, so he will try to keep the foot standing .”
This website uses cookies.