Vitor Belfort Brings In Karate Master to Prepare for UFC 126 Bout Against Anderson Silva

Vitor Belfort, who about a year ago, earned his Karate Blue Belt from Vinicio Antony, believes that his Shotokan Karate skills will play a huge part on his UFC 126 title bout against Anderson Silva. Joining his camp is Jayme Sandall, the South American Karate champ, who is one of the top Shotokan practitioners in the world.

Sandall, who also helped Belfort train for Rich Franklin back at UFC 103, told Portal Vale Tudo (translated by Fighters Only), that they have been developing a specific strategy to defeat one of the most feared strikers in MMA:

"We’re going to do a strategic and technical work, develop a game plan to fight against Anderson. Master Vinício Antony developed a series of karate moves to create a specific strategy for this match,"

"Karate, once again, will come in to sharpen Vitor. He’s already up there with conditioning, standing and ground skills. Well trained. Now we’re going to add timing and distance as well as for attack and defense."

As we have all seen on his past fights, Anderson Silva is one of the best at controlling the distance and gauging the timing of his opponent. Vitor Belfort has been sharpening his Karate skills for the past few years, and plans to counteract just that. Will it be enough to dethrone the long time middleweight kingpin though? I guess we'll have to wait and see.