When your buddy, training partner and MMA legend gets throttled in front of millions of fans, casting widespread doubts as to whether or not his time as a contender is over, what do you attribute it to? A bad day of course; we all have them, except usually our off days consist of running out of donuts by 9:04AM, rather than having a world class fighter brutalize our face repeatedly with punches.
In the wake of “Minotauro”” Nogueira’s stunning and abrupt stoppage loss to Cain Velasquez Saturday night, the future hall of famer’s teammate, UFC light-heavyweight champ Lyoto Machida, recently ‘tweeted’’ (thanks to Tatame for the quote):
“Unfortunately, it wasn’t his day. Cain is very well and hit it in the spot. MMA is like that, you can win or lose in seconds. I was very sad with Minotauro’s loss, because I know he worked hard to this fight. But I liked Wanderlei (Silva’s) fight, always in his aggressive style, fighting forward. He won and he deserved it”.
Yes, we agree, Cain did a damn fine job at hitting ‘the spot.’ Many people likely thought Velasquez could defeat Nog, but not too many people probably expected the AKA heavyweight to do that ‘well.’ Machida’s comments about it not being Nogueira’s day are understandable, but, even die hard Nog fans must be wondering if the legendary fighter is still capable of making another title run.
And as far as Machida’s comments on Wanderlei, can’t argue with that either; Silva looked good. See what a new face can do for you?