Back in 2005 at Pride Critical Countdown, Mauricio “Shogun” Rua and Antonio Rogerio Nogueira engaged in one of my favorite fights ever. Shogun walked away with the unanimous decision victory that night, but it looks like Lil’ Nog will get his chance for revenge eight years later. Brazilian website Tatame confirmed that the fighters have agreed to face off on a yet-unannounced card in June, and the fight will NOT be taking place in Brazil:
The confrontation should take place in June, but the fight will not be in Brazil, as every fan would like. The site of the newspaper The Lance! reported the possibility of holding the fight at the last weekend (of the month).
As of right now, UFC 161 is scheduled for June 15th in Canada and while they haven’t officially chosen a location yet, it’s highly likely that it will take place in Calgary. The annual UFC Independence Day card is penciled in for July 6th in Vegas, and will likely feature the middleweight title bout between Anderson Silva and Chris Weidman. If they are planning an event for the last weekend of June (the show would take place on the 29th), it’ll be interesting to see where it ends up.
Shogun (21-7) is coming off a loss to Alexander Gustafsson at UFC on Fox 5, while Nogueira (21-5) picked up arguably the biggest win of his career over Rashad Evans at UFC 156 last month. It was heavily rumored that the two men would be the coaches on The Ultimate Fighter Brazil 2 and face off afterwards, but those positions went to Nog’s brother Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira and Fabricio Werdum instead. Either way, getting the long-anticipated rematch between Shogun and Lil Nog is great in my eyes no matter how it plays out.
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