Machida Awarded Unanimous Decision Victory, White Talks Rematch

Lyoto “The Dragon” Machida was awarded a unanimous decision victory over Mauricio “Shogun” Rua at UFC 104 Saturday night. He retains his light-heavyweight title despite the opinion of many fans and critics who felt the match should have been scored as a loss to the champion.

Even UFC president Dana White disagreed with the judges, “I thought ‘Shogun’ won the fight.”

Rua was the aggressor through the first few rounds scoring many times, picking Machida apart. To many the challenger would have appeared to have walked away with three of the five rounds on the score card.

The former Pride champ felt that he was victorious but accepted the judges decision.

“I trained hard for this fight for four months,” Shogun said afterward. “My corner was telling me I won the fight. I feel like I won this fight but a fight is a fight. What can I do?”

The champion was more than happy to offer “Shogun” another shot.

“Whenever he wants, I’ll try again,” Machida said when asked if he’d be interested in giving Shogun an immediate rematch. “No problem.”

At the post fight press conference Dana White voiced his displeasure at the result of the fight by talking about a rematch for the two light-heavyweights.

“I think there will be a rematch,” White said. “I talked to both of them, and they both agreed to a rematch.”

White wanted to stress to fighters not to leave the decision in the hands of the judges and not to sit back to pick their shots.

“One of the things I always tell these guys is ‘You can’t leave it in the hands of the judges,’” White said. “You just can’t do it. But at the end of every round, neither one of the guys went after it. Neither guy tried to steal the round.

“You saw it a lot in boxing – and these guys have got to learn it in MMA – is when that 30 seconds is left, go after it and try to steal that round. Neither one of them did it throughout the fight.”

“I knew it was going to be a tough one. I knew it was going to be strategic. It was everything I thought it would be, except they should have pressed more and gone after it at the end of the rounds and tried to really pull out the rounds and make it easier to score. It was a tough fight to score.”

Lyoto “The Dragon” Machida was awarded a unanimous decision victory over Mauricio “Shogun” Rua at UFC 104 Saturday night. He retains his light-heavyweight title despite the opinion of many fans and critics who felt the match should have been scored as a loss to the champion. Even UFC president Dana White disagreed with the [...]

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