To help him prepare for Okami, Munoz trained extensively with the UFC middleweight champion himself, Anderson ‘Spider’ Silva, who has fought Okami in the past. “Me and Anderson, we get along really well. I’ve been training with him for a while now. I train with him on and off when he comes in from Brazil, but he’s had his camp here for this fight (Silva will headline UFC 117 vs. Chael Sonnen on August 14) for me to help him out. I’m pretty excited. He showed me a lot of stuff, I showed him a lot, it’s a two-way relationship so it’s pretty cool,” Munoz told me when I interviewed him recently (video of the interview attached below).
When I asked what his strategy was coming in against Okami, Munoz replied succinctly, “I’m going to take him down and pound him out”. Silva agrees. After training with Munoz and having experience against Okami, Silva was confident about Munoz’s chances against his Japanese opponent. Munoz said in a separate interview, “Anderson actually told me that after sparring with me, and after fighting Okami, Yushin has nothing for me. He knows what Okami has, so we’ve been working really hard to understand how he moves and how to counter back. He’s got a lot of great stuff that he’s showing me.”
