MMASWISSNEWS.COM: Cigano celebrate his victory against Cro Cop

By Guilherme Cruz

Photo Josh Hedges

Until October 25^th of 2008, few people knew who Junior “Cigano” dos Santos was. Rodrigo Minotauro’s pupil, the Santa Catarina native went to the UFC with a respectful record, and showed his potential in just 81 seconds. Dropping the former Pride fighter Fabrício Werdum, who had never been knocked out before, Dos Santos started to appear between the tops, but needed one more victory to confirm that wasn’t joking around on UFC.

After knocking Stefan Struve (UFC 95) out in 54 seconds, Junior was scheduled to fight the Pride legend Mirko “Cro Cop” Filipovic, one of the biggest names on sport’s history. “He’s really tough! I knew he was really tough, that’s why he’s Cro Cop, but I was really confident on the work we made“, reveled the Brazilian, that had the fight on his hand from the start to the end, and made what more than 30 fighters couldn’t do: make Cro Cop give up. “Was really tough, but I knew I could win“, said in exclusive interview with TATAME.com.

Training beside champions as Anderson Silva and Rodrigo Nogueira, Cigano was confident to the fight. “I’m really happy, the work went well, thanks God. I’m on

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for two months, away from family, working hard to make a good fight and put my rhythm up there... Now it’s just happiness. I’m really happy with my performance there“, celebrates Junior, that wasn’t surprise when the Croatian tried to take the fight to the ground.

“I expected that, when things got hard for him, he would try to take me down, and I was well trained on the ground, but I didn’t want to stay there. I defended the takedowns very well and I fell on top, then he got up really quickly. I preferred the fight standing, where I was felling ok“, reveled. “They (UFC) liked a lot, were really happy with the fight. Now, probably they’ll put this kind of fights, and even bigger fights, and I expect this. There are a lot of good people, Velasquez, Lesnar, but I can’t and I won’t want to choose opponents. Whoever they put it’s excellent“, guarantees, calm, when asked about a title shot. "I have no rush to fight for the belt, but this is the consequence of the work and we’ll get there“.