A lot of people were predicting that “Shogun” Rua was finally going to be crowned champion last night in Montreal, but come on, not too many fans were thinking that Lyoto Machida’s first loss would come via ‘holy effin hell’ beatdown. After all, this is a guy that hardly incurred a scratch against several notable dudes including former champ Rashad Evans, so the image of seeing Machida with a shiner that was screaming out for sunglasses was pretty damn shocking.
Clearly after leaving their first bout in the ‘hands of the judges’ (does anyone else have their ‘hands’ talked about this much?) Rua decided to take it up another notch last night, and speaking after the bout, he had this to say about the game plan he employed (thanks to MMA Junkie for the quote):
“For my first fight, I trained and studied Lyoto Machida’s game and tried to fight according to his style – in a safer way,” Rua said. “For this fight, I knew him better, so I tried to exploit him and to take more risks and take more chances and go to try and finish the fight.”
Rua also stated that after his first bout with Machida, he noticed that the former champ was leaving himself exposed while countering off of Shogun’s kicks, and thus, a right overhand was in order…yes, seems like that was a good call. To read the full article head here.