After the impressive UFC debut, knocking the tough Luis “Banha” Cane in the first round, the Bahia native Rogério “Minotouro” Nogueira had to cancel the planned bout against Brandon Vera due to a foot injury, but the recovery is fine and the light heavyweight fighter is waiting for the definition to his next bout. In exclusive interview to TATAME.com, he spoke about the plans to the future, a possible fight against Lyoto Machida, the title fight between Anderson Silva and Vitor Belfort, and his brother’s next opponent, Cain Velasquez.

You have suffered an injury on your foot and had to cancel your second fight on UFC. How’s your recovering?

I’m doing physiotherapy, treating myself, my foot is pretty much better, I’m back to train last week, I’m feeling much more secure. After to debut on UFC my fight with Brandon Vera was scheduled and the foot had no time to rest and I had an injury and was running, I had no time to recover. Now I started to train, I’m not running anymore, I’m focusing more on the muscle part, but I’m back to trainings and next month I’ll be scheduling fight.

Do you have idea of when will you be back to the octagon?

This week I’ll be in touch to know how it’s gonna be with Ultimate guys. I’m anxious to do my second fight on the event. If it’s God’s willing I’ll be back in the end of March or April. I have no idea of who I must face, even because there are a lot of people hurt.

After beating Luis Cane, who’s considered top 10 of category, UFC offered you the fight against Brandon Vera, who came from defeat to Randy Couture. Did you like the choice or did you prefer a better ranked athlete?

Actually, I think each fight is different and Brandon Vera is a guy who disputed the title and has a powerful name on United States, made very good fights, knocked Frank Mir out and made good fights with good knock outs, it’s a guy with a good technical level. I saw him training personally on his gym, so definitely it would be a good fight to me for advertisement and name.

At the moment Lyoto has the belt, do you believe that if you have two victories would you have chances to fight for the belt this year?

I have no rush, I still have a lot of fights to make. It depends a lot of Ultimate, because we don’t ask them fights, they do the matches.

How is the training with Anderson Silva?

Anderson is training well, he’s strong, He always surprise, because he’s very fast, he’s very well, starting to train now, He has all the time to train now, and about the injury is overcame.

You’ve trained with Vitor Belfort on BTT and now you’re training with Anderson and they will face each other in Abu Dhabi. What do you expect of this fight?

That’s a complicated question. I think it’s gonna be a good fight, because they’re both experts, you definitely be a big fight.

Your brother is in San Diego training. Do you intend to meet him on USA to follow the training on this final lap?

I will, I’ll go on the beginning of February to do the sparring with him. When I left there he was okay, on a powerful rhythm, practicing a lot of Wrestling with people from Marco Muñoz, a very good people, is training on the ground with Allan Góes... Rodrigo is very focused and the physical part is very good, strong, with a good explosion, he’s up with the diet, he’s on the same weight of the fight against Randy, he’s moving better. I believe a lot in Rodrigo, he’s more experient and he will win with that.

Do the team already had a strategy for his fight against Cain Velasquez?

I think Rodrigo can take this fight standing up easily, he’s more experient, more tough, He trains for more time, makes this fights out of his country for more than ten years, he’s more tough, and if it goes to boxing, I’m sure that Rodrigo takes. I think Cain Velasquez Will try to put ir down, because Rodrigo has a better hand.