Shogun Injured, Out Of UFC 85

by Robert Sargent

In an unfortunate turn of events, it was announced earlier today that Mauricio "Shogun" Rua had re-injured his left knee - this time with a complete rupture of the ACL - and has withdrawn from his UFC 85 bout with Chuck "The Iceman" Liddell.

Shogun originally injured his knee just prior to (some claim during) his UFC 76 loss to Forrest Griffin, and had surgery shortly after.

He will now be forced to undergo a second round of surgery and will be out of action for many months.

Shogun's lacklustre performance at UFC 76 was shocking, to say the least, and his woefully poor conditioning was largely attributed to the knee injury.

In preparation for the fight with Liddell, it was said that Shogun was more focused than ever, and had trained harder than he had ever trained before. This intense training may have led to the injury to his knee.

This could not come at a worse time for the 26-year-old, who looked to regain his dominance over the light heavyweight division with a clear-cut victory over Liddell. Instead, fans will have to wait for a replacement opponent for Liddell to be announced. Shogun will head back to the operating table.

An argument can be made that Shogun has not been the same fighter since breaking his arm in a freak occurrence at PRIDE 31 against Mark Coleman, and that argument does hold some merit, but a refocused Shogun could pose any number of problems for any of the top 205-pound fighters. Just ask current UFC Light Heavyweight Champion Quinton Jackson, who was completely destroyed by Shogun in 2005.


Hopefully, once he has had time to recover, we will get to see the newly-refocused Shogun back in action. For now, we can only wish him a speedy recovery.