The days seem to roll slowly. Barely three weeks on the countdown and we’ll see how Anderson Silva’s trip to the Carnival paradise Rio de Janeiro turns out during the April 18 UFC 97 “Redemption” at the Bell Center in Montreal. Besides perhaps learning a couple of samba steps or looking for that Girl from Ipanema, or lounging at the Copacabana, “The Spider” actually hied off to Rio for an octane-fed top-level jiu-jitsu training with BJJ legends Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza and Andre Galvao.

Galvao studied and tries to imitate Leites’ fight style and uses this during Silva’s fight trainings.

While Silva (23-4-0) is known for his primary skills of Muay Thai and Brazilial Jiu-jitsu, his top-level jiu-jitsu training in Brazil speaks a lot about what he thinks about his BJJ skilled opponent in Thales Leites (14-1-0). “Thales is a new kids who’s just starting out, but he’s already proven that he deserves this opportunity,” Silva declared. “He’s a dangerous opponent, just like all the others I’ve faced. He has this opportunity to fight for the title because he impressed the promoters enough to get this chance.”

The 27-year-old Leites (14-1) has never been finished in 15 career fights and has enjoyed a relatively stealth rise up the middleweight ladder.

Other fighters that makes us want to time-travel to April 18 are Cheick Kongo (13-4-1) who will clash against Dutch kickboxing hero Antoni Hardonk. Former World Extreme Cagefighting light heavyweight champion Steve Cantwell (7-1) also highlights this card with a showdown with world-ranked Luis Arthur Cane.

Here are more reasons for the excitement:

Chuck Liddel vs. Mauricio “Shogun” Rua

Brian Stann vs. Krzysztof Soszynski
Cheick Kongo vs. Antoni Hardonk
Luis Arthur Cane vs. Steve Cantwell
Denis Kang vs. Xavier Foupa-Pokam
Jason MacDonald vs. Nate Quarry
Ed Herman vs. David Loiseau
Eliot Marshall vs. Mike Ciesnolevicz
Mark Bocek vs. David Bielkheden
T.J. Grant vs. Ryo Chonan
Sam Stout vs. Matt Wiman

On a side note, we just can’t help but wonder how the so-called previously unrecognized regulations of Regie des Alcools, des courses et des jeux (RACJ), the government agency that oversees combat sports in Quebec, would affect the over-all outcome of the fights. This so-called previously unrecognized regulations for the sport is the prohibition of elbow and knee strikes. The RACJ regulations, which were actually intended for “mixed boxing” in the 1990’s also asked referees to intervene whenever a fighter is knocked down. We hope this will not result to a watered-down scuffle at the octagon.

More reason for us to shiver in anticipation.