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UFC Quick Quote: Ed Soares manages Bentleys, not Toyotas

Anderson Silva Big Nog

"We don’t have a tremendous amount of guys in comparison to some who are out there. I’ve seen some management companies with 60, 70 guys that they’re representing. I kind of look at it as a car dealership. When you look at the car dealership, well, thank God there are Toyota dealers. There’s nothing wrong with Toyotas. They’re great cars, reliable cars, but there are 3,000 of them on the lot. Walk into a Bentley dealership, though, and there are only 12, 15 cars in the place. There are two things about that: The guy’s walking in to buy the car, and you know they’re not going to be negotiating price when they’re buying a Bentley. And that’s how I feel about our fighters. You want one of our fighters, you’re going to get a high-performance fighter. I like to keep it that way.... We have what I consider our ‘Three Kings.’ Anderson Silva is the pound-for-pound king. Lyoto is the king of karate, and we have Nogueira, who is the king of heart because he has so much heart. Those are our three big cards. In a card game, if I were playing poker and I had three kings, I’d think I had a pretty good hand."

-- Ed Soares talks to Yahoo!Sports.com about his path to becoming a manager and spokesperson for several of the top mixed martial artists on the planet. The Portuguese-speaking 37-year-old prefers quality over quantity when it comes to fighters who he represents. And with his "Three Kings" from Brazil it's clear that he and his partner have a recipe for success. Of course, his job is not all sunshine and roses. He often finds himself caught up in the middle of various difficult situations -- look no further than Anderson Silva's win over Thales Leites and Lyoto Machida's decision over Shogun Rua for proof of that. Nonetheless, his fighters win more than they lose, making Soares one of the more successful and high profile managers in the sport today. Will that success continue in early 2010 when Silva is supposed to take on Vitor Belfort or will he keep him parked in the garage until something better rolls around?

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