Rua plans on soldiering on and finishing his UFC contract despite a bad KO loss in his last outing.
In 2003, Mauricio “Shogun” Rua exploded onto the MMA scene at PRIDE FC’s Bushido events, stomping and soccer kicking his way to the top of the light heavyweight (called middleweight in Japan) rankings. Fifteen years later and Rua is still around, and not planning on going anywhere. That’s despite taking a bad knockout loss to the violent Anthony Smith in just 1:29 at UFC Hamburg last month.
“I had a good camp, I had no injuries, I was 100 percent,” Rua told MMA Fighting. “Unfortunately he landed a straight punch and I got dizzy and he followed up with a flurry of punches and the referee stopped the fight. I think that my mistake was being a little exposed, and that’s when he landed.”
To be fair to “Shogun,” he did have to contend with his opponent being switched from Volkan Oezdemir to Smith just days before the fight. It was also his first fight in 16 months, something that left Rua feeling “a little bit out of rhythm.”
Still, the ferocity of Smith’s finish left many wondering whether the 36 year old Rua should retire. That group included Mauricio’s wife and mother, who he says push him on the retirement issue “all the time.”
“They ask for that, but they understand me,” he said with a laugh. “Fighting is my work, my career and my passion, so there’s a lot involved. I will stop when I see it really is the right time to stop. … I want to end this contract and then I think I’ll probably stop. I don’t know. I’ll analyze it with my family and my team, everybody.”
Rua currently has 3 fights left on his UFC contract, which should be enough to tell him whether he can still hang in a light heavyweight division that is starting to fill back up with killers like Anthony Smith, Volkan Oezdemir, and Luke Rockhold.