area and then eventually his students opened schools. I don't think you could drive a half hour and not find a Renzo Gracie affiliate or someone that has trained with Renzo that teaches jiu jitsu or mixed martial arts.

FiveKnuckles: Frankie Edgar trains here with you and he's about to fight BJ Penn for the lightweight championship. How is Frankie progressing in his training?

Ricardo Almeida: His jiu jitsu has gotten very good. It takes time, we all need time. I need time to develop my wrestling, to develop my striking but Frankie is one of the most determined people I have ever met in my life. He takes himself very seriously, he's very competitive, and he's a very talented, very naturally gifted kid. He learns everything so quick. Some of the things, like the guard and those things, they take a little while to learn and especially because not too many people can put Frankie on his back but his top game has gotten really good. We saw that in his last fight. Renzo told me when they went to Abu Dhabi to do some promotions, there was a bunch of jiu jitsu world champions training over there so they were training every day. On the first day Frankie was having a hard time because some of the guys over there are really good, they're world champions but by the last day Frankie was just taking it to guys who have been jiu jitsu black belts for probably longer than Frankie has been training jiu jitsu. He's very talented and I think there's no doubt that he can hang with BJ Penn on the ground. In the beginning it was like, once he took people down that's where it ended for him. He didn't really believe in his jiu jitsu enough. I always told him like "hey Frankie, I believe that you can beat anyone and that it's always going to be three five minute rounds in fights that you'll win pretty much every second of every round, in and out, takedowns, top positions, and ground and pound, or you can start putting guys away."  This is how we do it; with the guard pass, with the mount, and these are just some of the tactics of Gracie jiu jitsu. He started getting really comfortable with it in training and started getting confident then we saw that in his last fight, he dropped the guy with a right hand, got on top, mounted, made the guy turn, took his back and choked him and it was a beautiful fight. I was so proud of him.

FiveKnuckles: Is mma your only focus or do you plan to compete in jiu jitsu competitions?

Ricardo Almeida: Once I'm done fighting (pauses) ...again (laughs), I definitely plan on competing with the gi, maybe Abu Dhabi, depending on how long I keep fighting. But yeah, I think competition is something that will always be with me so I would definitely like to compete with the gi again.

FiveKnuckles: You were involved in an incident with Nate Marquardt back in 2003 that involved some fighting after the bell, etc. Is that over between you two?

Ricardo Almeida: Yeah, it's over. From my part, yeah, and I've seen him many times since and we have mutual friends and I have nothing but respect for Nate. It was just one of those things, he said some things before the fight. I was probably young and immature and took it personally. To...

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