Palhares: “Wanderlei would beat Anderson”

By Erik Engelhart

Photo Marcelo Alonso

 

Getting ready to face Alessio Sakara in his third fight in the UFC, Rousimar “Toquinho” Palhares, wants another victory to move up in the middleweight rankings, while the ATT fighter looks for his second consecutive victory in the UFC, where he has nine fights. Rousimar’s fight against the Italian takes place on August 8 (UFC 101), in the United States, and the Brazilian knows what he’ll have to do to defeat Sakara.

 

"I’m training hard and I have trained a lot of striking too, because his strong thing is boxing. I won’t go with a strategy set, I want to feel the fight and develop everything that I’m doing in the trainings", said the Brazilian Top Team black belt. With an eye on everything that is happening in his category, Palhares spoke about Anderson’s fight against Thales Leites, which happened at UFC 97.

 

"I liked the fight, it was very studied and both respected each other a lot. I believe Demian (Maia) could surprise (Anderson), as well as Anderson... It’s a very difficult fight to analyze", said the Jiu-Jitsu ace, who also commented the possible fight between the former team mates Anderson and Wanderlei Silva. "Now, with Wanderlei coming to the middleweight, I’m pretty sure that he would defeat Anderson... It would be a great fight, they’ve already trained together, know each others’ game. Andersonwould have to put his game on and if Wanderlei went inside, I have no doubts that he would win. To me, it would be Wanderlei, it would be a great fight", concluded the fighter.