A highly-anticipated light heavyweight showdown between Rashad Evans and Mauricio Rua — which was set to go down at UFC on FOX 19 on April 16, 2016 in Tampa, Florida — was put on hold (yet again) after “Shogun” was forced to bow out due to a knee injury.
As a result, Glover Teixeira stepped in on a few weeks notice to face “Suga” in a pivotal 205-pound showdown. And if you ask Rashad, while he’s okay with the switch in opponents, it’s going to be a much tougher challenge.
He elaborates to The MMA Hour:
“It’s definitely a tougher switch, honestly speaking. Glover is someone who has been gaining momentum by putting together a few good wins and dominating in different fashion. He’s been showing his ground game, showing the fact that he can grind out fights and not just in typical Glover fashion by knocking people out like before. He’s shown that he’s worked on his game and gotten better. So it’s definitely a tougher fight.”
At 36 years of age and with a couple of tough injuries on his resume, Evans says retirement isn’t in his cross hairs just yet, but insists he knows when the time will be for him to hang up his gloves for good.
“I think about that and a lot of people ask me about it. But I really don’t feel 36. I don’t know how long I want to do it for. I definitely don’t want to be one of those fighters who fights for too long and then somebody has to have that awkward retirement conversation that they don’t want to hear. So, I don’t want to do that, but I want to be able to quit when I feel like I am done. I’d like to quit after I have a good performance in the cage. But you never know when that final bell is going to sound. I almost had the bell rung when I couldn’t come back with my knee injury, something that happened in practice. So the dream is to be able to go out there and go out on your shield and feel the triumph that you had in the cage one last time. That’s what you want, you go out like GSP with the belt in your hand. That’s what I want. However long it takes me I will do that. But if my desire to pursue that goes further than anything else, then I will be done.”
Rashad is coming off a unanimous decision loss to Ryan Bader at UFC 192 after nearly two years on the sidelines. It’s a defeat “Suga” says he has yet to watch, and probably never will.
As for Glover, he’s currently riding a two-fight win streak, most recently battering Patrick Cummins last November.
For more on the upcoming UFC on FOX 19 event — which includes a main event bout between Tony Ferguson and Khabib Nurmagomedov — click here.