By Guilherme Cruz

Photo Marcelo Alonso

“It couldn’t be better”. That’s how Xande Ribeiro analyzes his first MMA fight, after a third round knockout against Takashi Sugiura at Sengoku 5. Besides the celebrations, Ribeiro says he still has a lot of thing to develop, and wants to come back as soon as possible to the Japanese ring. “By the technical side, I failed when I could have tried an arm-lock finish the fight. But it was cool, I like being in the ring and I’m just waiting for the next fight”, said the black belt, that explained why he got tired on the last part of the fight. “There’s a lot of explanations. The adrenaline on the first round consumed me a little and I came back to the second a little tired, I have to train more cardio and get faster”, told.

At the Japanese’s corner, the expert Josh Barnett helped Sigiura for the fight, and Xande realized that in the fight. “He’s an expert fighter and knows how to avoid the ground, might have help him a little. Sigiura was strong, but when I tried the single leg I didn’t felt so much pressure”, revealed the two times BJJ open weight champion, who’ll come back to trainings in one week. “I don’t know yet (about his next fight), but I might be back in November. I’ll rest this week, train another three and fight again”, finished the athlete, that wants to train more to continue at 205lbs division. “There are a lot of good guys in Sengoku in this division… I wanna get stronger for this weight”.