Champion or Not: The Shogun Is Back

The night of UFC 104 finished in controversy and questions: who landed more effective strikes, who was controlling the action, who should be wearing the belt, and what where the judges smoking?

One question that was certainly answered: is Maricio Rua's career over? The answer was a very strong no.

Rua's PRIDE FC past is well documented, and as is his less than impressive arrival to the UFC. In a matter of months Shogun went from Chute Boxe prodigy to a fromer PRIDE cast off.

Fans of Rua blamed the knee surgeries and UFC fans tore him down. Certain writers here termed Rua as a "tomato can" and I myself took to calling him Daimyo Rua instead of Shogun. (Daimyo being a subservient lord in Medieval Japan.)

But it is very clear now, the name is Shogun Rua and don't wear it out.

Physically Shogun was back. He was explosive and powerful, his kicks were lighting quick, he was light on his feet and his strikes did real damage when they hit. Even more impressive was Shogun answered all the cardio questions with this fight.

Previously Shogun has struggled to finish three round fights against Forrest Griffin and Mark Coleman, but in this contest Rua handled five rounds with relative ease. At the end of the third round Shogun was still very active and appeared to be the fresher fighter in the later rounds, bouncing his front leg in that classic Muay Thai stance.

While Rua's cardio improvement was amazing, it was surpassed by his technical improvement. I don't think we have ever seen a Shogun Rua that was as technically mature and sound as the one that walked out at UFC 104.

Shogun was snapping off quick, efficient kicks with no wasted movement, his punches were straight and quick, and Shogun's footwork was the equal of Machida's. His accuracy was excellent and as was his defense, blocking many of Machida's strikes.

Those big looping punches that had become a Shogun trademark were all but gone, mainly because they created too big of an opening for Machida to counter. For the first time we saw a Shogun that clearly came into a fight with a plan and the will to excute.

Against Machida it was very clear he wanted to target the body. Machida's elusivness is legend, so Rua gave himself the biggest possible target rather than shooting for Machida's head. Rua connected again and again with massive side kicks and Machida's ribs looked like they had been hit with a hammer.

When Machida tried to cricle out away from the punishment on his ribs, Shogun would hit him with a very hard leg kicks. As the fight wore on, and Machida wore down Rua started using more of his power punches to great effect, even causing Machida's knees to buckle at one point.

The official results of the match will be debated for weeks to come and I don't want this to become that argument. The one thing that really cannot be debated concerning this fight is that the 205-lb division has yet another elite fighter in Shogun Rua.