Thales Leites And Andre Pederneiras Respond To Anderson Silva With Open Letters

Tatame received open letters from Thales Leites and Andre Pederneiras (the head coach for the MMA/BJJ camp Nova Uniaio, alongside Wendell Alexander). Both letters had to do with the recent comments by Anderson Silva about Leites being a friend.

First, the letter from Thales Leites, as Tatame translates:

"First of all, I would like to say Anderson has never been or went to Nova Uniao. I have never seen him around, we were never friends, only professional colleagues. No doubt he is a great fighter. If he says he was easy on me because he considers me to be his ‘friend', I don't agree. The fight was not finished because neither of us could do it. People criticized me a lot after the fight with Anderson, I really should have done more and gone for it but the guys who came after me did not do things much different. The ones who tried to stand-up with him got exposed and were knocked out and the one who used the game plan of taking him down was defeated on the judges' decision, like me. I think it's funny a champion that always prays on the interviews to respect the other and martial arts to say something like that. I am a fighter and I respect everyone, I know what a fighter goes through to get there. We all have good and bad moments in our career, after all our like is just a big rollercoaster with ups and downs. But we have got to stay humble and stay quiet about subjects that do not add anything. There is no superman, we are all human beings".

After the jump, Andre Pederneiras has a longer letter and even gets in a terrific mention of Marcos Galvao and Eduardo Dantas being actual teammates and friends about to fight amicably for a Bellator title - with a pizza waiting for both afterwards.

Again, this open letter by Dede Pederneiras comes straight from Tatame:

"To begin with, I would like to thank to the great champion Anderson Silva for having mentioned our team on the show. We are very flattered. On the other hand, we do not agree with what he said about training on the team during the preparation for that fight and, mainly, the way he mentioned our athlete Thales Leites. We are sad to hear him saying he took easy on the guy. Nova Uniao trains its athletes to become the bests in the world and sometimes we are successful and others we are not, like with Thales VS. Anderson.

I ask the champion that if we have another contender in the future so that he do not make it easy on him. We do not believe that is what actually happened. Anderson did not finish the fight because he could not. It is very bad for us years after that fight to hear a speech undermining our work and everything we have done for the sport, like trainings, tactics and everything else. Undermining a team, a coach and mainly an athlete. Actually this kind of statements does even more: undermines the 20 others guys Thales has fought and came out as the winner, well known athletes who fight on the worldwide MMA circuit.

Champion, Nova Uniao will always root for you. Congratulations for your success.

P.S.: The first thing I told to my athletes Eduardo Dantas and Marco Loro when the pairing up was confirmed was so that they should fight for real when the Bellator title fight comes. Go there and fight and then we will all eat pizza together, but during the fight, do your best to finish the fight. MMA fans don't deserve that and even less your friends and teammate. That is it.

Graciously, Andre Pederneiras"

So, pizza is the MMA peacemaker? Awesome.

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