Mauricio “Shogun” Rua has had a pretty volatile run in the UFC. He’s a former champion who has fought the absolute best of the best since he first showed up in the Octagon, but he’s also 7-8 in the promotion and has been a baffling watch at times, even in spite of his UFC 190 win over Antonio Rogerio Nogueira.
Prior to getting back on track against Nogueira on Saturday night, he lost two in a row and four of five—six of nine if you want to go back a little further. But in that run, he lost to Jon Jones and narrowly to Dan Henderson a couple of times, smoked James Te Huna and totally overwhelmed Brandon Vera.
He’s incredibly, remarkably contradictory in his performances.
In his wins, he often produces the type of violence that has people exuberantly claiming that he’s back and motivated and ready to become champion again. In his losses, he tends to have people mourning his very existence and hoping that he’ll consider retirement given the punishment he’s absorbed in his career.
The Nogueira win produced something in between.
The first round saw him rocked a couple of times, falling back against the cage and covering up long enough to sloppily return fire from the pocket. The second saw him collect himself and begin a more conservative fight, thudding body kicks and punching combinations around clinching and takedowns. The third was close but resembled the second enough for the judges to side with Rua and award him his first win in nearly two years.
Afterward, no one was claiming he was back, but no one was claiming he was done either. It’s that kind of even-handed approach to the years Rua has left that might allow him to flourish for a final time.
With the pressure of having to fight the best every time out, Rua has struggled to gain momentum. His wins have come every time the UFC has tried to force him into the role of gatekeeper, a role he continuously proves resistant to, but his losses have come whenever he’s been thrust back into the realm of contendership.
This time, with no egregious celebrations of his latest win, perhaps he can get his footing back under him. A fight with Rampage Jackson or Jimi Manuwa—should he survive his bout with Anthony Johnson next month—would make a lot of sense, as both are guys the UFC has no particular plans for, and it would put no pressure on Rua to provide a given outcome—a situation very much analogous to his fight with Nogueira.
At 33 years old, the Brazilian is relatively young, but he’s shopworn in a way that almost no one in the sport is at that age. He’s been in more crazy wars than most guys have had fights, and that’s obviously going to add up over time. But he’s still got skill and a reunion with Rafael Cordeiro, buoyed by training partners like Fabricio Werdum and Rafael dos Anjos, which will only sharpen it further.
All of this is to say that Shogun Rua isn’t back, but he’s not done either. He beat a 39-year-old warhorse on Saturday night and needed the scorecards to do it, but a win is a win. He looked like he could rack up a few more against the right opponents and with the right training.
Simply accepting that fact, without the euphoric highs of title talk or the dizzying lows of requesting a retirement, is a pretty good place to be for one of the sport’s true legends.
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