Brazilian magazine 'Tatame' recently interviewed Luis Azeredo. Here's what Azeredo had to say (interview by Eduardo Ferreira):

Tatame: How was your first fight in the PRIDE Lightweight GP?

Azeredo: It was like a hurricane that passed through there. The guy didn't even touch me. I don't have much to say about that fight. I went into both fights with the intention of trying to finish them fast.

Tatame: But in the second fight, against Takanori Gomi, you were not able to execute your strategy...

Azeredo: Yes... but I exchanged strikes very well with him. The guy was extremely fast and I wasn't able to land a solid strike on his chin. When I got him down on the ground, he only tried to tie up the fight and didn't attempt to do any ground game. The referee was helping him and would quickly stand the fight back up, which is what Gomi wanted.


Tatame: What factors prevented you from winning?

Azeredo: He got two green cards due to his stalling tactics on the ground. In reality, he only used boxing techniques, whereas I showed much more versatility then him. I used Muay Thay, jiu-jitsu, wrestling, a flying knee. In my opinion the victory should have been mine, but we did a great show in the standup.

Tatame: This fight was different of the first one, when Gomi beat you by KO in the first round...

Azeredo: This time we fought until the end. I showed him that he's not as good he thinks he is. He has no ground game. He only has his boxing and nothing more. I was defeated and losing is bad, but that is part of every warrior's life. Now I wait for another oppurtunity to fight in PRIDE.

Tatame: It seems that you lost some teeth after the fight. What happened?

Azeredo: (laughs) In all honesty, my teeth were already kind of broken before the fight. My two front teeth were already kind of ruined ever since I started training at Chute Boxe. They finally fell out in one of the standup exchanges during the fight. I picked them up and gave them to master Rafael Cordeiro, and I said, "keep them for me here, because I'll fix them back up in Brazil". (laughs)

Tatame: What happened with Daniel Acacio against Akihiro Gono?

Azeredo: Daniel fought well, but I think his knee was kind of injured, and Akihiro Gono started to kick at it. I think Daniel started to lose a little bit of focus because he was concerned too much with his knee. But the fight was pretty even. The only thing is that Gono was able to get mount at the end of the fight, and that must've made a big difference when judging the result.