Following Big Nog's retirement, Phil Mackenzie looks back on the career of Antonio "Minotauro" Nogueira and asks what it was that made Big Nog so special.
Antonio Rodrigo "Minotauro" Nogueira looks like one of the oldest 39-year-olds you've ever seen. Twenty years of the cage and the ring trampled his face into a duvet of tissue and incised permanent creases in his skin, like a timeline mapped out in glyphs of scars and breakages. Big Nog retired today, but he was a fighter. He sometimes gets called the Rocky of Mixed Martial Arts, because when he fought he'd get beaten down and then miraculously struggle back to victory.