Wanderlei Sila's last interview in Brazil

[Chute]

Soon after the great homage made by promoter Mônica Marchett and Fábio Gurgel in MTL´s ring, one day before definetely boarding for a new life in United States with his family and physical preparator Rafael Alejarra, Wanderlei Silva gave us an exclusive interview where he talked about the perspectives in America, the sucess of MTL´s first edition and about having ex-rival Minotauro as neighbor on Florida. Check the complete interview below:

Wanderlei, what do you think about this first edition of MTL?

It was a very well organized event with good fights, I wopuld like to congratulate the organization, I think MTL has a great future, and I expect that next year we have more teams, more editions, because the organizers are serious people and gave an upgrade in our sport. Club Paulistano, the place where the competitions were held, its great. Although the entries were expensive, it received lots of people and everything was fine. It´s a new event made for the fight lovers.

The event was really exciting and was decided in the last fight…

It was great, I started losing, turned over and in the end this happened. I have no doubt that this event will happen more frequently and I want to see more teams, new athletes and new coaches.

You postponed your travel to USA in one week to take part in the event?

I should have gone last week, but there was this compromise and I couldn´t miss it. And it was a good decision. It´s good to see that people love their work and came to the event in great number and everything thai I could do for the sport´s growth I´ll do with many pleasure.

I´ve never seen you almost crying, but you were really touched with this last homage…

All this farewell thing made me very happy. I received lots of homages in many places, but receive a homage in my country it´s even better, and I my heart was touched as anyone in here could be touched, because we´re all humans like any other. I would like to congratulate the organizers of the event.

When will you go? Have you already defined a place to live?

I´ll leave tomorrow (august 12th) to Vegas, my baggage is even here in the hotel here in São Paulo. I was packing and I´ve put all my life in two bags, a big house and everything, but I have to face this challenge and I expect get more space for many athletes, coaches that one day will be there. What I can do to help the guys I´ll do. If everything goes fine, I´ll sign my contract now, go to Vegas and stay there for three weeks, until the the next Ultimate ends, then I´ll go to Los Angeles.

Will you watch Napão´s fight there?

I´ll be there in loco watching this event. It´s a great chance of watching a great event. After spending one week in Los Angeles, I´ll go to West Palm Beach, in South Florida, where I´ll live and build my structure.

We´re curious on the fact that you and Minotauro, that in Brazil lived 800km from each other, will be neighbors in USA. Will you train together?

I´m expecting that he has a good team there to fight against my athletes because we´ll never leave apart this thing of being rivals. But is a good rivality, we respect each other, the guy is a great athlete and if we make good events there and put our athletes to fight it would be fantastic. I expect that he also gets sucess there, and we can help our friends. The sport has many stars, and I think that I should make mine bright without bringing damage to the others