Shogun: Losing always sucks, hints at weight change

Mauricio “Shogun” Rua beat Chuck Liddell, Lyoto Machida, Mark Coleman, Alistair Overeem, and Rampage Jackson among many others, but no one beats time. Although Rua was just a year older than Ovince Saint Preux, mixed martial arts warps time, and Saturday night at UFC FIght Night 56, Shogun suffered his fourth loss in five fights. It took just 34 seconds.

Losing is always bad, said Rua said via a translator at the post-fight press conference as transcribed by Sherdog. In this weight class and heavyweight, when a punch lands, you feel it. But I’m gonna get through this loss and talk to my team and think about the future. Defeats always suck.

The punch landed clean and that’s when a knockout happens. He was happy to get it. I made a mistake.

Shogun expanded upon the remarks in a message on Facebook, and indicated retirement is not on the table.

I want to have my thanks registered here for all the support on my fight Saturday night. I want to also thank you guys for all the showings of care and support after the fight.

Losing is always very bad, hurts a lot, but what’s hurting more is to lose without being able to show what I trained, and what I know. Fighting is fighting, and I know very well that in this weight class any punch that connects early on can cost a huge price. For many times in my career I was in the happy side and unfortunately this time I faced the sad side of this story. I know a lot of people will unload harsh words, some will make constructive criticism and others will take the chance to throw all sorts of jokes and offensive words as possible. Unfortunately this is all part of being in the spotlights, and it’s something that we as professional athletes, and mostly in Brazil, have to be always used to deal with.

As much as some will doubt it, I prepared myself a lot for this fight and was well trained, and this is what hurts the most about losing this way, without being able to show what I trained. Those who followed it, trained with me, or saw some of my training knows this. When you lose fighting some rounds, or even some minutes, in some ways it’s less of a suffering ‘cause you were able to show what you got and what you prepared, and it wasn’t enough. But losing this way it’s certainly very frustrating.

I made a technical mistake, maybe due to anxiety and a big will to get this win in Brazil in such an important moment of my career, and I paid the price. Props to St. Preux, It’s part of the game and he deserved the win.

Now I will rest, enjoy my family and then think about my next steps, TUF Brazil, maybe a weight class change, but I’ll keep on going ‘cause winning is easy, but keep on battling and overcome the obstacles is what makes a true fighter. Thank you all for the support.

Saint Preux offered the view from the other side of the cage.

Shogun comes in with looping punches and I’m pretty good at counter punches,” OSP said to FOX Sports. “I did a real good step off. … I used that and it ended up landing real good.”

I just threw the high kick just to let him know I could throw one and let him know it was there. I knew he was going to try to pressure me. He threw the inside leg kick. I was gonna check that, but he caught me real good with the inside leg kick. And I knew when he had me back up against the fence that he was gonna lunge in. When he lunged in for that hook, that’s when I countered, and I caught him pretty clean.

Yes he did.