The Ultimate Fighting Championship held a conference call Thursday for UFC 81 on Feb. 2 at Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas.

Tim Sylvia takes on Antonio Rodrigo “Minotauro” Nogueira for the interim UFC heavyweight title in the main event and former WWE and NCAA wrestling champion Brock Lesnar makes his UFC debut against former UFC heavyweight champion Frank Mir at UFC 81.

Sylvia, Lesnar and Mir were on the call to discuss their fights.

To check out the audio from the call, click here.

The conference call went for over an hour. Here is the rundown of Parts 1 and 2 of the call with Part 3 to come later:

BROCK LESNAR

On whether he is ready to compete with somebody as experienced in MMA as Mir:

“I hope so. I would like to think that. Obviously, this is a true test for me. I’m looking forward to to the challenge.

On his preparation since his MMA debut 10 months ago:

“It’s given me a lot of time to hone in on my skills and to absorb as much as I possibly can.

On Mir being a little insulted that the UFC chose him to be Lesnar’s first opponent despite the experience gap:

“I think Frank knows … I’m being billed as this pro wrestler. Obviously, that’s where I got a lot of my visibility as a pro athlete, professional wrestler. Yeah, I think Frank’s been in the game and he understands you gotta take every fight seriously. Everybody poses some kind of threat. Obviously, Frank is a smart enough guy to understand that (UFC president) Dana (White) wouldn’t have signed me to a deal if the owner of the organization didn’t have any confidence in. If it was me and I was Frank, I would be taking it very seriously and hopefully he is.

On how he thinks the fight will break down:

“If I could tell the future I wouldn’t be sitting here talking to you. I don’t know how it’s going to go down. Hopefully, we are going to get in there and go after each other. I’m not going out there to make anybody happy but myself. I’m going to do the best that I can do.

On a lot of the internet message boards pulling for Mir to strike a blow for “real MMA fighters against these pro wrestlers”:

“Once again, I’m tagged as a professional wrestler. People forget that I was an amateur wrestler foro 18 years and competed at a high level. I got a lot to lose in this, you know, and so does Frank. This is my road to hopefully becoming UFC heavyweight champion. So, for me, I’m confident in my trainers and my training partners and we’re going to go out there and try to win this fight.

On how long he has been training MMA:

“Iit’s going on two years now that I’ve really been 100 percent focused on MMA.

On what he took away from his MMA debut last June:

“For me, I don’t have to feel comfortable. Competition is in my blood and I’ve done it for a number of years whether it’s on a wrestling mat, in a ring or in an octagon. It’s going to be no different when the door closes on the octagon. It’s me an one other man out there. I’ve been in those positions before, so I really don’t … I’m going to be very comfortable.

On how his training has changed since transitioning into MMA and what he has done to improve his striking and boxing:

“That’s something that I wanted to physically work on and mentally work on since the beginning. In this sport, I knew I had to be well rounded, so my wrestling kind of had to take a back seat because it is one of those things that I was very good at. So I wanted to become very comfortable with my striking game and on the ground as well. That’s what we have been focusing on is my hands and the ground game.

On whether he can regain the stardom he had as a pro wrestler:

“For me, being a big star is not what this is all about. I’m back competing again and getting into the fight game. I’m just excited to be a part of the UFC. We’ll see what happens. I’m just focusing on being a fighter in the UFC.

On what he did differently in his training for pro wrestling and MMA:

“Let’s get one thing clear here, pro wrestling is purely entertainment. We go out there and know the outcomes of the bouts. obviously, this is real. This is the real deal. I’m taking my training back exactly how I did when I was an amateur wrestler. We bring all these new disciplines, the striking game, the ground game. It’s apples and oranges. You can’t even compare the two.

On what excites him about MMA:

“Since I was 5 years old I’ve been a competitior. If it came down to tag or whatever, it’s in your blood. Some guys enjoy reading books and some guys enjoy going out and playing football or wrestling. It’s in your blood. Obviously, I feel good and blessed that I’m able to be a part of the MMA world.

On what made him want to try MMA:

“This was something that I wanted to do a long time ago. When I got out of college and when I won my NCAA title, I didn’t have a lot of options. There are not a lot of options for an amateur wrestler. You can go to the Olympics or you can become a coach. The bottom line was (WWE owner) Vince (McMahon) had $250,000 waiting for me and a contract on the table. I was 21 years old and I didnt have a pot to piss in. Come on, you make the decision? I made the decision to try and become a pro wrestler.

On whether his pro wrestling fans will follow him to MMA:

“I think there is a lot of interest in the MMA world. I think there is a lot of interest in the sports entertainment world. I think there is a huge following from all of the pro athletes because this is a new deal to watch all the fights and everybody is talking about it. Everybody is talking about UFC. So I think there will be a lot of people watching to see how I’m going to make a transition against a credible fighter. That’s one thing too. He (White) is no dummy. He sees some credibility in Brock Lesnar as an amateur wrestler and I’v got one fight under my belt and I have a lot of notoriety. This is a business and I’me very fortunate to be involved in that.

On what he wants to prove in the UFC:

“I don’t have a lot to prove. To me, once again, I’m very blessed to be a fighter in the UFC. This is one fight at a time and hopefully things fall into place.

On whether he has any UFC jitters:

“No, I don’t. Obviously, there are some nerves involved. I can’t really pin-point it. I guess, the mere fact that … competing in anything, if you don’t have any nerves involved, you’re really not into it. It’s nothing different than I haven’t felt before. So I’m feeling really good.

On going to the Minnesota Vikings training camp a few years ago and trying out for the team:

“It’s like apples and oranges. Training for football, obviously, I had to put on a lot of size for that. There is no comparison. It’s like comparing amateur wrestling to football practice. It’s two different sports and you train differently for both of them. Obviously, I gotta be in a lot better condition for MMA. It’s a longer period of time and it’s one-on-one and it’s 15 minutes and sometimes it’s 25 if you’re in a championship bout. There is a huge weight difference for me coming into this. I gotta make 265 (pounds) and in football I was almost 300.

On the positive things about pro wrestling:

“I think as a pro wrestler I competed in front of, I think we were in Australia, and I competed in front of 72,000 people. I prepared as a pro wrestler before every match, I had to get pumped and I approached it like I did for an amateur wrestling match. And a lot of the guys I worked with didn’t like working with me because I was a little too rough for them. I think getting that out of the way, even in college at the national tournaments, there was 22,000 people there. I’m no stranger to competing in front of crowds.

On how he is being received by other MMA fighters:

“Well, I think in my training camp everyone knows I’m taking it very seriously. Obviously, I’m gonna have a lot to prove. There are going to be people gunning for me and people cheering for me. That’s the battle of the beast. There is always somebody that’s got their favorite. I’m going to have to come out and prove myself. Even to Tim and even to the other fighters. I’ve got a lot to prove, yet. There are going to be some people who disapprove of where I’m at on the card because of who I am. There is agoing to be a lot of animosity towards me because of my visibility that I have. Alls I gotta do right now is shut up and play ball and keep on proving myself.

On the decision to leave the WWE:

“It’s like a broken record. I’m here to talk about the fight. I’m not even going to answer that.

On what the UFC liked about him and why they wanted to sign him:

“Like I stated before, Dana and the executives at UFC are no dummies. They’ve got a lot of visibility by signing me and I’ve got some credibility to go along with it. You get the question, ‘Are we going to see any other pro wrestlers trying to make the leap (to MMA)?’ I don’t think so because none of them other than Kurt Angle, who is past his prime, can really make this leap. I truly believe that, so enough said.

On his comfort defending against Jiu-Jitsu and submission attempts:

“In my mind I’d like to believe that and we’re coming into this fight believing that. We’ve put a lot of time and effort into, not only to learn how to defend, but you have to learn how to initiate the moves before you can defend against them. I can’t make up … I mean, he has a lot of years in Jiu-Jitsu where I’ve got more years in wrestling than he has as a competitor anyways. We’re going to try and win this fight.

“I’m not going to pull any punches. I’m going to go out there and try to have a fast pace to try and initiate some damage early. We’re coming to win. We’re coming to Las Vegas to win this fight.

FRANK MIR

On whether he feels any added pressure being the “real MMA guy” vs. the “pro wrestler”:

“No, not at all. For the reason that Brock Lesnar had such a long career as an amateur wrestler. In college, he was a two-time champion, so he had legitimate roots to be an MMA fighter. Even if he had never had a career in pro wrestling, he would have been an MMA fighter. So it really doesn’t have anything to do with it, the reason being he has all the credentials and tools to go to that platform.

On whether a victory over Lesnar puts him in contention for the UFC heavyweight title:

“Yeah, because we all know that it’s not just about being a great fighter. It’s also being a draw. So I feel because of the publicity Brock Lesnar can bring to a bout between the two of us, if victorious, it also depends on what happens between the Tim Sylvia-Nogueira bout. Obviously, if Tim Sylvia wins it puts me up a little higher because of our history. If Nogueira wins, it puts me up with everybody else that is up there.

On where he is physically since the accident:

“I’ve been 100 percent for a while now. So there are no excuses for anything. Even after the loss that I took to Brandon Vera back in November, I told everybody before and afterwards that physically I am fine. I got caught. There are no excuses. That night he was a better fighter. When I fought the next fight I was more mentally prepared. There are a lot of mental aspects behind being severely injured that I didn’t contend with that people would be able to help me with. The doctors cleared me physically for quite some time and I haven’t had to make any excuses for that.

On whether he has any added motivations because this might be his last shot:

“I think that’s looking too far ahead. Basically, right now, I just want to perform well. If I take care of what I can take care of, then what happens at the end will pretty much take care of itself. I can’t consume myself with thing, ‘Well, if I lose, this is what’s going to happen. If I win, this is what’s going to happen.’ You start think like that and you forget you have a fight first.

On how to deal with Lesnar’s physical strength:

“By not being stationary. brock Lesnar is stronger than I am. It doesn’t take a genius to figure that out. He’s stronger than probably most guys you’ll ever compete against. So if I just lay there, yeah, I’m going to get crushed. But if I can use constant motion, moving around and using some speed, the same thing that happens when a little guy fights a big guy in the gym. You have to use motion and keep it moving. If you stand still and all that weight is just going to bear down on you. If you give someone leverage to grab onto something, they just rip and smash you into the mat.

On the mental obstacles he faced after the accident:

“It would be a long conversation, but, basically, part of coming back from injury and competing at a high level is also being and having your mental game back on. That was something that I hadn’t paid attention to because of the injury everything was more of a physical aspect. You’re worried about how is it going to perform, your range of motion, what can you do, what can cause you to reinjure yourself. Those are your main concerns. I think the mental aspect of being 100 percent gets put on the backburner because, obviously, you can’t see that until you compete and get past the physical portion.

“So once I got past that I thought that’s when I was out of the woods. Once the leg was healed up physically, but then I realized like in the Vera fight and not being very aggressive or being flat-footed, it was because I was worried about this, this and this. It took me a while and in talking to my coaches, ‘Why were you worried about that? It’s not a problem anymore.’ I describe to people like a guy breaks his ankle or has an injury and walks with a limp for a while. Once the injury heals, he still kind of has a limp. There’s nothing wrong with him, but it’s in his head. He hasn’t mentally gotten over it, yet. He’s still babying the injury.

On how he prepared for Lesnar:

“In his first match, he performed and did exactly what he should have done. He fought a guy that wasn’t super-high caliber, but he dealt with him like any fighter deals with a guy that’s not high caliber. He got him out of there real quick. For the preparation, I had to look more toward his college career to kind of get more of an understanding. Even with the two years of working in MMA, I think he’s still wrestling. At this point, it’s going to take a while for the Jiu-Jitsu and kickboxing to catch up to his wrestling, which would only make sense. How could anybody catch up in two years of training to a whole lifetime, especially when people start training when they are 4 and 5 years old. Those are a lot of your instincts.

“I tried to bring in a lot of wrestlers. There were guys who had college backgrounds in wrestling and heavier guys and work with them on that aspect. I had Tommy Rollins from Ohio come down and worked with him and a couple of different guys from Oklahoma and see what it was like. Also sparred with guys that are MMA fighters with a strong background in wrestling that added on Jiu-Jitsu and kickboxing aspects to the game to understand the tendancies.

“What does it feel like to have a guy who is 280 and real powerful hold you down on cross side and try to elbow the hell out of you? How am I going to deal with this? What techniques are better for leverage and better to use? It kind of showed me I have a lot of stuf in the technical aspect of my game. Where sometimes before I could go a speed move or technical move and then try to hit a power move in combination, but the power move is not going to be there because all I’m going to do is wear myself out because I’m not the more powerful person in this matchup.

On getting whether he got more comfortable fighting big, powerful wrestling types:

“Every style is beatable. There is nobody who is undefeatable. There hasn’t been a man born yet who can’t lose. So everything has its drawbacks and advantages. Sometimes being stationary and strong and bearing down and elbows and that type of thing has its advantages, but then there are disadvantages. Constant motion has it’s advantage and disadvantages. Being strong has its advantages, but there are disadvantages to it too. And then speed. I like to watch a lot of college wrestling to see different matchups.

“Even in boxing, you see this guy using his height and is always beating everybody, but all of a sudden this guy is using head movement and moving around and can’t hit the guy. Now, he’s getting in close and now the height is a disadvantage. In all combat sports, there is a game plan. If there was a formula like rock, paper, scissors where this can’t be beat, then they’d hand out trophies based on people’s stats and not performances.

On what he’ll weigh for the fight:

“I guess we’ll see at the weigh-in. It kind of moves around.

TIM SYLVIA

On the Randy Couture situation and his fight against Nogueira being for the interim UFC heavyweight title:

“It really doesn’t bother me. I’m happy that I get to fight Nogueira. I’ve been wanting to fight him for a long time. He’s a great fighter and it’s going to prove a lot of things. The whole dispute with PRIDE and the UFC. They were always saying PRIDE heavyweights were better. Lately, we haven’t seen that and Nogueira currently is ranked a little higher than me. I truly believe I can go in there and beat him. The light at the end of the tunnel is it’s for another title. So it’s good for me and it’s good for my career and if everything goes right I’ll be the champ again. And whatever they decide to do, I’ll just keep fighting. I mean, I was happy I get another fight and hopefully it’s somebody I look forward to fighting. Frank said earlier, and I think everyone knows, I want to fight him real bad, so I’m pulling for Frank because we have some unfinished business.

On the possibility of being a three-time champion and if he has received the respect that is due:

“I think with the true fans and the people that are knowledgeable about the sport I do (get the proper respect). You got your average bozos that don’t know anything about the sport, who see Brock coming in or see these superstars like Kimbo Slice  who really haven’t done anything and they think they aare studs. Brock has a true test ahead of him and I do too. I don’t know? I’m always an underdog because I’m always so big and a lot of people don’t like me because I’m the biggest guy in the division. So they are always pulling for the underdog.

On the status of his back and whether he remains healthy:

“Yeah, I’m waiting for something to happen in the next few days because nothing has happened to me in this training camp. Usually, you come in with aches and nagging injuries and something that bothers you. My last fight against Brandon (Vera) I had a bad hand and stuff like that, but nothing has happened, yet. I was sparring last night and I took a pretty good shot and I felt my I got cut, but it didn’t. It just blackened up real good. So I don’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing, but I feel really good for this fight. Nothing hurts and nothing is bothering me.

On being the underdog against Nogueira:

“I always perform best when I’m in the underdog role. When I’m favored, I usually end up losing. So it’s a good spot for me to be in. I like it. I have this thing where I like proving people wrong my whole life. This is just another opportunity I get to do that and basically I get to stick it to the man.

On the biggest challenge that Nogueira presents:

“There are many. I truly believe he is the best heavyweight Jiu-Jitsu fighter in the world today. I mean, he brings to the table being a former PRIDE heavyweight champion. He’s a stud. I’ve been watching him for a long time. I was watching Nogueira when I wasn’t even fighting, yet, when I was just training. When I started fighting, I was watching him and I was like, ‘Wow, I’d like to fight him one day. He’s really, really good.’ I truly believe he’s somebody I can go in there and beat and move me up in the rankings. Maybe, someday if everything goes right and we beat Nogueira, we can get Fedor (Emelianenko) to sign a fight. We’ll get to shut the world up after that.

On the attention that Lesnar’s debut is getting:

“I’ll be paying a lot of close attention to it because obviously the winner is going to get a title shot down the road and I plan on becoming the champ again. Brock’s done a lot in WWE. He’s got a big name. They are (promoting) this as is the wrestler going to beat the fighter? They are trying to hype it up that way. I understand the whole philosophy behind him getting all the exposure.

CARLOS ARIAS/The Register

carias@ocregister.com

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 24th, 2008 at 1:15 pm and is filed under MMA, Ultimate Fighting Championship. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.