FCF:   Your last fight was against Enson Inoue back at PRIDE 19. How it has been for you to wait all that time to finally fight again? Are you getting anxious?
RMN:   I’m getting anxious. What happened is that I had a problem with my back so I couldn’t train and since I couldn’t train this was making me anxious. But I met a doctor who was introduced to me by Pedro Rizzo, a Dutch doctor, and I had problems with my back muscles and this was causing me a spine problem. My back muscles on the right side were way stronger than my back muscles on the left side and this was causing the problems in my spine. So I got there to start the treatment and the muscles from my right leg weren’t that well too, it was hurting a bit, and the guy [the doctor] made me lift weights, do squats and stuff like that. I was even a bit worried at first, like "isn’t this going to hurt me?" On the first day I got there he made me do squats with 140kg, and from there on it was a lot of hard work in a small town in Holland, a farm city, waking up every day at 7 am and working out 6 hours per day till we corrected the problem.

FCF:   How is the injury now, and are you 100% recovered now?
RMN:   Nowadays I believe I’m 100% recovered. Let me tell you, my physical capacity is coming back now. I have been training as hard as I ever did, both in the physical part as in the technical part, because last year I was emphasizing a lot on the technical part and was neglecting the physical part a bit, like weightlifting, the physical preparation, squats and stuff, so I was having some muscular problems. I had an injury on my knee, another on my heel, and I was lacking a bit of muscle. Now I’m even a bit stronger, I even gained around 2 kg in bodyweight and I’m not feeling any pain in my back now.

FCF:   You and your twin brother Rogerio spent some time training Muay Thai in Holland with Peter Aerts recently. How did this opportunity come about?
RMN:   In fact we didn’t have much time to train with Peter, I only trained with him three times there. This doctor who took care of my injury is also his doctor, and is also his physical trainer, and he took care of my physical preparation as well since he has a degree in sporting sciences. He is a doctor, a physiologist and a physical trainer, so he took care of my preparation and he also does it for Peter, so we usually worked out together while I was there. But around ten days after I got there he had to fight in K-1 against Ignatov, so I had the chance to train with him for only a short while. But he introduced me to some people and I trained with them for around two weeks while I was there.

FCF:   How was the experience of training Muay Thai with some of the best in the world?
RMN:   This adds a lot to you. I won’t say that I learned Muay Thai there, but I learned a lot of details. I learned several clinch situations, stuff that can help me in NHB, I also learned how to position myself in a knee situation, all those small details that make a lot of difference in a fight.