A profile of Alexandre Pequeno Nogueira, the greatest name in the history of Shooto
When this reduced version of Hercules arrives once again in Medina, a 20 thousand inhabitants town in Northern Minas Gerais, Brazil, in order to rest after a new feat in the rings, he won’t be welcomed exclusively by a party. There are some who bet that, in the corral of the Franca Nogueiras’ farm, the oxen will never cease to blink and moo as they feel the local star spproach.
“Uncle, I’ll go over there with the bullocks and will be right back,” young Alexandre would say on his vacation, smiling back at the immediate grunts uttered by the elder relatives. “Crazy kid!” they’d say. Once in the corral, Pequeno’s challenge was to give takedowns to as many bullocks as possible by unbalancing them, performing levers with his 5’6’’, 148lb body, and dodging the kicks by the confused training partners.
“Pequeno is not an ordinary guy,” Rodrigo Minotauro usually states. “He’s got amazing strength for his size,” says the 232lb fighter. Anyway, except for the bullocks, the party is undisputed when Shooto’s super-champion arrives in the town next to Rio-Bahia highway trying to forget everything. “Every time, I take 60 shirts there. Some days I go to the public square and everyone is wearing the same outfit – it’s like the uniform of a football team,” says the 27 year-old champion.
Next time it won’t be different. Besides having tamed another tough bull, Pequeno will arrive having beaten, on March 11th, 2005, Nova Uniao professor Joao Roque, one of his most respected opponents in the category. And in his luggage there will be a respectable record: the belt has been his for the past six years.
They are wrong who associate his success exclusively with the preparedness given by the country life and the rustic
