and he shouldn’t retire. But he is not a contender as it sits right now. Injuries or not he looked simply awful last night. I think a lot of it is disappointment in him after the expectations coming out of PRIDE. I’ve always thought he was a little bit on the overrated side (obviously by my commentary of late) but I do think he is a good fighter. But the UFC is too deep to have too many more performances like that come out of Shogun.

Also, yes Coleman has been hard to stop in his career. Of course…he is kind of REALLY DAMN OLD now and he is nowhere near the fighter he once was. You can’t compare this Coleman to pre-2000 Coleman.

You seem to be making just as many assumptions concerning his physical and mental capacity as those with which you disagree. In some cases you even cite similar points while producing a different product.
Unless there is evidence withheld, there is no reason to put faith in your argument any more than another.

I think that term can be applied to calls for his firing, but if hating Brandon Vera for making $200,000 for beating Reese Andy is OK, then I think hating Shogun for making $340,000 last night (extrapolated from the fact that he made $150,000 for gassing against Forrest) is OK too. The hype surrounding him isn’t exactly his fault, and he did have a magical Grand Prix (I do think GSP’s string is more impressive), but to go from that performance to a headlining fight is a little much for me.

So now we’ve got Liddel-Shogun, Jackson-Jardine and Lyoto-Thiago in the LHW division. You can make an argument for the winner of two of those three fights to get the next shot at the title. Guess which fight you can’t?

Wasn’t Forrest injured before the Shogun fight and didn’t he have to have shoulder surgery? Wasn’t Mark Coleman (who hadn’t fought in over two years)also recovering from a knee injury that made him pull out of the Lesnar fight? If you want to make excuses they can go both ways but questions about Shogun are substantiated by his last couple of performances. It’s too early to throw the guy under the bus but even with injury excuses people should be wondering what’s going on with this guy.

If you are looking for an example for comparison, everyone wrote Frank Mir off but he did manage to come back to be better than ever. Shame some of the same people trying to defend Shogun are also downplaying Mir’s comeback. Even years later in these discussions the old Pride vs UFC shenanigans pop up.

"[Coleman] is a great wrestler but I think I’m better at jiu-jitsu and striking. Plus, I have better cardio. I think it’s a good match up for me in theory. I feel great. I’m well-trained, in good shape and have little weight to cut for the fight. I’m feeling fast, my cardio is good and I have been working a lot on my power."

He was confident about his ability and his cardio. He said he was well-trained and in good shape. What happened between January 12th and January 17th?

Coleman has only been ko’d twice in his career prior to last night. He took a beating from Fedor last time and wasn’t ko’d.

Shogun is coming back from injuries that sometimes take 12-36 months to fully recover from.

People need to relax. i am disappointed as well, that we haven’t seen the old Shogun yet, but I will reserve my judgment for now.

I didn’t care for people writing off 32 year old Nog, it’s really too early to throw 27 year old Shogun under the bus. Even if the guy was crippled, over rated, hopped up on goofballs and completely dependant on a soccer kick based offense he is still young enough to make every adjustment and get back to being one of the best in the world.

Still people are in their right to be wondering about what’s happened to Shogun, if anything he had more reason to be short on cardio for this fight than he did for his performance against Forrest, he went from legendary cardio to Mark Coleman level cardio. There seems to be more going on here than just the knee injury recovery.

But I can understand the negativity.

SHOGUN DID NOT LOOK LIKE A TOP 10 (let alone former #1) RATED LHW.
In fact he looked pretty crappy.
Yes, he is overcoming injuries, but no one wants to see a fighter do that inside the cage!

And I think at this point Shogun himself is questioning where his place in the sport is. But to write off all his previous success because his leg has been a useless hunk of meat for the last full year and 3 months… Thats bullshit.

When you break everything down, you can understand why Shogun has been struggling lately with not only his cardio, but his impressiveness inside the octagon. Then toss in the fact that he cannot use soccer kicks and foot stomps, which he loves to use.

you forgot

The injuries and ring rust are possible explanations for his performance and can’t help him at the moment

His camp appears to have consisted of him, his brothers, and jujitsu coach and a Muay Thai coach. That is not gonna add up to success nowadays. You need people who will push you and you need to know how to wrestle. You don’t need to dance about, kicking a few pads and going for the odd jog with your brothers and a few friends. You want that chute box snake pit vibe, where at any moment a team mate could kick your head in, and coaches that will push you to your limits.

Now shogun is living up to what must be his worst fear, showing himself to be a one hit wonder (or one gp wonder to be exact). His mystique is based on a run of 4 fights, a hollow achievement to build your confidence on. Now he is deflated and confidence must be low. Also, we have never seen his mental fortitude tested outside of his bout with little nog until now. Maybe the guy just doesn’t have the hart for MMA. Not a nice thing to consider but it could be the case. When all goes well his confidence is sky high, but when the chips are down he just doesn’t show. I’m thinking we may have a case of the Vitor Belfort syndrome on our hands.

Those crying steroids please consider there are a multitude of other possible reasons, or combinations of reasons, as to why Shogun did not perform. Takes those into consideration before you tarnish the reputation of a fighter solely on the bases of a hunch or theory with no fact based evidence. I personally feel it constitutes defamation and should not be tolerated by the BE staff. You are basically calling the guy a cheat without proof and it just isn’t right, everyone should be given the benefit of the doubt.

To conclude, unless there is a marked improvement in his performance against Liddell, it could be another 16 months until we see Shogun back to top form, that is if we ever do. He’s not down and out but he is damn close.

From September of 2006 to February of 2007, Shogun fought with only one to two month layoffs between bouts. He was injured and exhausted after the Overeem fight in February of 2007. Pride went under and he didn’t fight again till September of 2007 against Forrest Griffin where he was already coming in injured but he didn’t want to call off the fight and eventually tore his knee to pieces. After a 16 month lay off recovering from a really severe knee injury…. how many of you could really expect the same Shogun after all that he’d been through?

Cut the guy some slack, it may not have been an overly impressive victory but he still won and if he can stay consistent in time between bouts…. he’ll be fine.

I can. And you can presumably understand why we all think he will continue to do so.

Staying healthy is a skill, one that Shogun apparently lacks.

its funny that you assume that Shogun was on roids in Pride because he gassed after two horrible knee injuries and two surgeries in his first fight back. Mir took 35 months and he’s still crap but at least he’s back to low top 10 now. Besides the fact that alot of you are following the UFC like a Jappo kid follows his Tamagochi and you’ll no longer be interested in the sport 24 months from now when Shogun is back to form… Go out and destroy your knee twice then YOU try and compete on a professional athleteic stage against a bigger and probably the strongest physical guy at 205 in your organization.

not capable of competing at a high level then he should wait until he is. He is really doing more damage by fighting like this than he would by sitting out & getting healthy, if that is even the case.

What? Why not ten chances? How many times does he get to come out & perform like this before people realize he was never that good in Pride on talent alone.