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Mauricio “Shogun” Rua has been fighting for over a decade and, while still fairly young at 32 years old, wins have been hard to come by.

On November 8, Rua took on late replacement Ovince St. Preux in a five-round, light heavyweight tilt at UFC Fight Night 56. The results were disastrous. The Haitian finished Rua in dramatic fashion in the very first round, handing the Brazilian another TKO loss. The fight marked the first time in his career that he has suffered back-to-back TKO losses.

“I’m going to get through this loss, talk to my team and talk about the future, but defeats always suck,” said Rua at the post-fight presser, courtesy of MMAFighting.

When you haven’t put together consecutive wins in five years, some would say it’s time to go back to the drawing board. Fortunately for the former Pride champion, he still has time. Many fighters have enjoyed successful careers well into in their 30s and beyond—even native countryman and former rival Lyoto Machida. Like Machida, Rua will now contemplate whether it’s the weight class or his game plan that’s having such an ill effect on his career. 

He has competed at 205-pounds his entire MMA career, capturing the Pride and UFC 205-pound titles. Rua became a fan favorite by walking his opponents down and never shying away from a bloody battle. His wins in Pride—over Rampage Jackson and Alistair Overeem—helped launch the career of one of the best fighters the light heavyweight division has ever known.

Rua‘s success in Pride hasn’t translated to the UFC. He came into the promotion with a 16-2 record but has only mustered a 6-8 record since. In many of those losses—namely to Dan Henderson and Jon Jones—he has taken a beating. Could those painful uppercuts and knees finally be catching up to him?

Rua‘s skills haven’t evolved like those of his 205-pound competitors. This is not to say that he’s not capable of altering his game plan—he is a Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt under Antonio Schembri—but that he prefers to stand and trade. Rua lacks the speed and footwork shown by other light heavyweights like Jones or Alexander Gustafsson. He often welcomes shots and gives his opponents an easy target. His last opponent begs to differ. 

“I don’t think he was slow at all,” St. Preux told MMAFighting. “I think he mistook my reach, so I was able to catch him. … He hit me with a couple of good leg kicks.”

It will take more than a couple of good leg kicks to defeat the best at light heavyweight. If it’s not his speed, then maybe it’s the quality of opponents Rua is facing. He has lost to several of the 205-pound division’s hottest names, including the champion Jones, Machida, Dan Henderson and Gustafsson. St. Preux would be the first non-top-10 opponent the Brazilian has faced. 

Still, there is cause for concern over the steep decline at a relatively young fighting age. Rua has fought 32 times thus far in his career, which is more fights than similar fighters like Machida, Henderson, Rashad Evans and Michael Bisping had fought in before the age of 32. The difference between Rua and those men, though, is that he began fighting before his 20th birthday. 

Rua has also been knocked out at least two more times than any of those men have been in their whole career. Furthermore, he has been on the losing end of two destructive Fight of the Night performances against Hendo. All of this is a lot to take in if you’re the Brazilian, but to retire at this age would be a crime. 

“He might be the rare 32-year-old who sometimes looks and moves like he’s 45, but he came by it honestly,” said Ben Fowlkes of MMAJunkie. “If he hadn’t put himself through the horrors that diminished him, he wouldn’t be someone we knew or cared about enough to get sad over now.”

Erase the bouts with Henderson, Jones and Machida, and we probably aren’t talking about the same fighter. Maybe he becomes more hesitant and afraid to pull the trigger in fights. Maybe he doesn’t get past Hall of Famers Chuck Liddell and Mark Coleman en route to his eventual UFC title shot. Rua would’ve been regarded as nothing more than a Pride afterthought. Rua isn’t ready to retire like Liddell and Coleman were at the time.

The former light heavyweight champion could elect to drop down a weight class, like fellow Brazilians Demian Maia and Machida have done with success. The 185-pound division boasts a whole new suite of potential challengers, and it would also perhaps give Rua a quickness advantage (not to mention another chance for a title run).

A potential drawback is the change in weight class, which several well-known fighters (like Georges St-Pierre) have not exactly been open to. For one, it’s a difficult question to ask of a fighter who has fought his whole career in one division. There is also the question of health concerns. Rua cuts around 23 pounds to fight at middleweight. Tack on 15 more pounds and that decision becomes a lot more difficult—even more so when you account for the impact it has on your livelihood and family, because these men are fathers, husbands, sons and brothers too. 

It can affect the fighter’s mental state—even more so than his physical well-being. This becomes even more mind-numbing when you factor in an increasingly close fight coming up. 

Still, there are fighters who cut ridiculous amounts of weight out there. Jose Aldo and Benson Henderson have been known to cut around 25 pounds, sometimes just days out from the fight. But within the struggles a fighter has when trying to regain stamina come fight night, there lies the answer to the question of every fighter who’s contemplating a weight cut. That answer is to do it smartly. 

For Rua to make the cut to middleweight at this stage in his career, it would have to be done with extreme precaution. He’s at least considered it once before. Tim Kennedy, a potential future opponent, recently weighed in on whether or not the idea was a good one. 

What seemed like blatant trash talk could actually give the 185-pound division a marquee matchup. Kennedy is a solid all-around fighter with decent knockout power. He also defends takedowns and strikes very well. Ranked seventh in the division, Kennedy would give Rua a good barometer of how he factors into the landscape. 

Neither Rua nor Kennedy has displayed glaring holes in his game—though the Brazilian has a tendency to lower his hands and become a standstill target. Each man has fought wrestlers, jiu-jitsu artists and everyone in between. They are both coming off of disappointing knockout losses. A fight between the two would be beneficial for both parties and would send them off toward the title picture or even further into a cloudy abyss. 

For Rua, it will come down to the division he feels he has the best opportunity to win in. There are matchups with Brazilian bruisers Glover Teixeira and Fabio Maldonado at light heavyweight (if he were to declare that his home for good). Middleweight would be a tough place to call home, after all, with such a surplus of talent vying for contention. However, there is also a trilogy fight to be had with Machida.

His next fight won’t put him entirely in President Dana White‘s crosshairs, but it would raise a red flag. Could a third straight loss lead to a sitdown with White? What if he is finished in the first round again? Rua turns 33 on November 25. It is not quite the age Chuck Liddell was at when White made The Iceman quit, but age gets thrown out the window when you see one of the sport’s most legendary figures go down three brutal times in a row. 

Rua‘s path is a frighteningly clear one. He can prepare a more structured game plan, move down in weight or forgo the first two options. One more loss and perhaps we will see another former Pride fighter’s better days fade away, leaving him as nothing more than a mere caricature of the fighter that once was.

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