Shogun Rua's Knee Surgery Puts His Bout with Rashad Evans On Hold

Rashad Evans will face Mauricio "Shogun" Rua for the UFC Light Heavyweight belt, but when he will is in question.

Unfortunately for fans, that question won't be answered anytime in the near future.

MMA Weekly reported earlier today that Shogun, who came into his UFC 113 bout with Lyoto Machida with a knee injury, had to undergo surgery after dethroning "The Dragon."

Dana White spoke on the issue:

“He’s got a knee problem now, and he got it fixed...He had a bad knee after the fight.”

White told reporters that Shogun's surgery, performed by doctors in Los Angeles, would be followed up by five weeks of physical therapy in Las Vegas. No doubt that the therapy will help Shogun move five weeks closer to full recovery.

White was unable to give reporters a timetable as to when Shogun would be cleared to prepare himself for Rashad Evans, though he did point out that Shogun had his appendix removed just four week prior to his rematch with the Black House Karate specialist, and thus Dana would opine that the recovery process would not be a very lengthy one for Rua.

Rashad Evans could use the extra time to relax and spend time with his family, but if Shogun's recovery process goes exactly as Dana hopes and thus he's able to fully heal in a fairly short amount of time, then Rashad will be honing his game with Shane Carwin, Nate Marquardt, and the rest of the Jackson's Submission Fighting crew. 

The actual time Shogun takes to recover notwithstanding, Evans will still have to implement the same strategy to neutralize Shogun's "Chute Boxe Madness."

Though the co-founder of the University of Fighting—Universidade da Luta (UDL)—in Curitiba, Brazil, many would still find it in them to refer to his patented style as "Chute Boxe Madness."

I'm one of those people.

As for Rashad's signature style, his fits his nickname in that it's nothing more than pure sweetness.

No one has disputed that Rashad has some of the best takedowns in MMA right now, and when you mix that in with his always-lethal boxing abilities, it makes for a package that's tough for some fighters to break open—the reason being that a fighter has to figure out when Rashad's going to take them down and when he's going to strike.

With Shogun, the only real thing you have to worry about is when he's going to strike, but the only way to get past that is to have either an iron chin or an equally aggressive stand-up game.

Unless you're Rashad, in which case timing and fighting for the takedowns helps out just as well.

I think that while taking down Shogun won't win him all five rounds and it won't finish Shogun off in one round, what it will accomplish is that it will not only put Shogun on his back where Rashad could control him, it will also take its toll on Shogun's back.

It'll be tough for Shogun to get taken off his feet before Rashad takes him down. I'd say Shogun has good takedown defense unless Rashad takes him down akin to how Machida did in their first fight.

The ground is where Rashad wants it, definitely. Not to undermine his stand-up when comparing it to Shogun, but the stand-up is where Rua is his most dangerous.

Out of the sixteen people that Rua has knocked out in his career, only one person has not been knocked out in round one, and that was Mark Coleman at UFC 93.

Rua has never knocked out somebody in round two.

Rua also hasn't seen the loss column by submission since losing to Forrest Griffin in his UFC debut, and although his loss to Coleman in PRIDE was by way of a TKO due to a broken arm, he's never been knocked out.

Could Rashad be the first man to knock out Shogun?

Could Shogun knock out or even submit Rashad?

As soon as Shogun's knee heals, we can press play and see how it plays out.