UFC 104: Machida Era Squeaks New Life, But How Much?

At UFC 104, Lyoto Machida retained the Light-Heavyweight title via unanimous decision to Mauricio "Shogun" Rua.  This decision has caused an uproar throughout the MMA community as most had Rua winning that fight with points.

This fight also proved that Machida has some stuff he needs to work on if he wants to defeat Rua again.

Which brings me to my next point.  I recently wrote an article entitled: "Is Machida for Real?" (this can be found on my profile page) and, as I expected, the response from several readers wasn't quite positive, criticizing the title and body of the article and putting Machida on a pedestal, making him look like some sort of super hero.

UFC 104 just proves the theory: don't count your chickens before they hatch, don't make your hero look like nothing can beat them because whether you like it or not, fighters are first and foremost, human.  They make mistakes.  The same thing has been said about Anderson Silva.  Sure, he is one of, if not the most dangerous striker in the world today, but as you saw in his fights with Patrick Cote, Thales Leites, and to a lesser extent, Dan Henderson—in the first round, Silva is human.

I am not saying Machida isn't for real, all I am saying is that the response that he received through that article made him seem super human, which he clearly is not. He does make mistakes, so don't go into a UFC event and expect your favourite fighter to always pull out a highlight victory—because once in a while (and as you all saw last night)—he'll prove that he's human and make some mistakes.

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