Yet another of my favorite 'old guard' guys looking to break into the IFL coaching biz, and also has an upcoming Cage Rage fight.. from Gleidson Venga's excellent "Brazilian Notebook" column over on Sherdog comes this little blurp of news. Much more good stuff in the column, located at
Brazilian Notebook: Sperry Eyes Return
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Mario Sperry (
Pictures) is confirmed to participate on the undercard of Cage Rage's next event on July 14. The Brazilian legend will face
Lee Hasdell, a veteran English kickboxer with a sub-.500 record in MMA.
"Cage Rage is the biggest organization in Europe, and I'm happy to fight there, and even happier because my hand is healed," said Sperry. "About my opponent I don't know much; all I know is he likes to strike on his feet and he has a lot of knockouts in his career, plus this will be his Cage Rage debut and he will have the audience supporting him."
After this fight, the Brazilian Top Team leader will start to train a squad for the International Fight League (IFL), where, by the way, he would like to fight against the first man to beat him in a MMA match, Russian
Igor Zinoviev (
Pictures), coach of the Chicago Red Bears.
"Yes, I said I don't care against who I will fight, the competition is the most important," Sperry explained. "But for sure a fight against Zinoviev will be very interesting. But it doesn't matter if I just want this fight. The organization needs to have interests in matching us up. So, like he beat me in 1995. This fight has all the ingredients we need to be matched up."
About his IFL team, Sperry warned: "I will be there to win. I didn't choose the names of the fighters or the team. But I'm warning everyone, we will give our best."