The war of words has been heating up between UFC light heavyweight contenders Thierry "The African Assassin" Sokoudjou and Mauricio "Shogun" Rua. After his win over Kazuhiro Nakamura at UFC 84, Sokoudjou made it clear that he still had his sights set on Rua, a fight that he's wanted ever since his impressive back-to-back, first-round knockouts of Antonio Rogerio Nogueira and Ricardo Arona at PRIDE 33 and PRIDE 34 last year. In a recent interview, Sokoudjou would tell FightHype.com, "I would love to fight that guy. I've tried to fight him ever since I fought in PRIDE and he's been ducking me. Shogun has been ducking me since the PRIDE days."
Rua, who's currently recovering from knee surgery to repair a torn ACL, responded to Sokoudjou's challenge by telling Graciemag.com, "They can match me up against anyone and I'll be happy. It is Dana White and the guys at the UFC who decide who I fight with. I'm not going to give this guy any attention even because I have fought better fighters than him. He wanted to fight me and I never said yes or no – they just didn't make it happen and he ended up fighting Ricardo Arona at Pride's last event. I never heard anything about Chute Boxe telling him he'd have to fight Evangelista Cyborg before me, like he said. I'll fight him like I have always fought all top competitors."
Upon hearing this, the African Assassin contacted FightHype.com had a response saying, "If he's fought better fighters than me, then I should be a nice little tune-up/comeback fight before he challenges Liddell. Shogun never really says that he would fight me. He just comes up with cute little punchlines to avoid the potential fight." Given the bad blood that's brewing, a fight between the two could be an explosive event and Sokoudjou even has an idea for the fight card, "It can be UFC 88 or something. They can title it 'For Pride' and have me fight Shogun as his tune-up and have Rampage-Wanderlei 3 as the headliner."
Shogun, who's been plagued by injury and hasn't competed since his loss to Forrest Griffin back in September of 2007 during his UFC debut, is confident that he'll return to the Octagon later this year (possibly in September). Whether the UFC is willing to make this fight remains to be seen, but the pre-fight trash talk sure is getting interesting.
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