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#2 UFC Light-Heavyweight Division: Mauricio ‘Shogun’ Rua vs. Antonio Rogerio Nogueira

Shogun and Nogueira first faced off in PRIDE, way back in 2005

Seeing a fight like this on a UFC card, it’d be easy to mistake this show for one of Bellator’s senior citizen “tentpole” showcases. There’s no disputing that these two Brazilians are true legends of the sport and of the UFC. Their first meeting in PRIDE is amongst the very best fights in MMA history.

However, that PRIDE fight also took place in 2005. They rematched at UFC 190 and were both considered over the hill then – and even that fight was 5 years ago!

To be quite frank, both men ought to be enjoying retirement now. With a combined age of 82, this is probably one of the “oldest” fights in UFC history.

In their prime, they were polar opposites who somehow shared a lot of similarities. Both men were great strikers with knockout power, and both had tremendous ground games. The difference was that ‘Shogun’ was like an angry hurricane, all wild offense designed to both bamboozle and hurt his opponent.

At times of course, he was more technical than his reputation suggested. He famously picked apart Lyoto Machida at UFC 104 with his leg kicks, for instance. For the most part though, his wild attacks always worked well for him. There’s even an argument that behind Jon Jones, he’s the greatest 205lber ever.

That was then, though. And essentially, since his 2011 loss to Jones at UFC 128, it’s been largely downhill. Sure, he’s shown some flashes of the old ‘Shogun’ – knockouts of Gian Villante, Tyson Pedro and James Te Huna for instance – but those wins came against opponents with some serious flaws.

When he’s lost, meanwhile, it’s tended to be pretty bad for him – his last three defeats have come by TKO and he was in deep trouble in his most recent UFC fight with Paul Craig before rallying for a draw.

Nogueira on the other hand is almost even less durable than Rua is these days. A great technical boxer, ‘Minotouro’ once had a rock-hard chin to go along with his excellent punching power. On the ground, like his brother, he was an incredible grappler and submission artist.

However, we haven’t seen that version of Nogueira for years now. He was able to use his boxing to defeat a pair of very limited fighters in Sam Alvey and Patrick Cummins. But his most recent fight saw him knocked out by Ryan Spann – the kind of fighter he’d probably have eaten alive in his earlier days.

Given the massive limitations of both men now, it’s hard to see quite how this one plays out. Given their first two fights were largely striking battles, there’s no reason to suspect this one will be any different.

That means that the outcome will likely be based around which man can land a big shot first. It could honestly go either way, but I’m leaning towards Shogun, as he was slightly quicker in his prime and at least appears capable of still taking a shot. Hopefully both men head into retirement after this one is done.

The Pick: Shogun via first round KO