Shogun’s family really wants him to retire, but he’s not gonna

Don’t let the size smedium Vale Tudo shorts fool you. Mauricio Shogun Rua wears the gi pants in his extended family. Because even though his wife and mother hold actual organized meetings to convince him to retire, he won’t.

“I do this for 13 years,” he said on the Brazilian television show Agora é Tarde Wednesday. “Every month, my wife and my mother meet and try to make me stop (fighting), but I tell them that’s what I love to do.”

For some men, that sort of high-level benevolent nagging might inspire a career change. But not Shogun. “My mother asks me, ‘You really have to fight?’ And I say, ‘That’s my job, mom.’”

Of course, there is no shame in retiring to support your family. American superhero Brian Stann did it in 2013. “There’s a lot of reasons that have caused me to retire from the sport,” he told Ariel Helwani on the MMA Hour. “But really for me, it’s the best thing for me, and more importantly for my family right now.”

Shogun has had an exceptionally violent career. He’s won four of his last ten fights. Two of those brutal losses were Fights of the Night against Dan Henderson. So you can understand where mom and wife are coming from. But Shogun has a larger family: that screaming collective of bloodthirsty fans who supported him during his eight-fight run to the Middleweight Grand Prix Championship in Pride. It took a Coleman-style broken arm to stop his momentum. Unfortunately, mutilation injuries don’t go over well at family reunions.

We love Shogun and we want to keep him. But we sympathize with the emotionally invested loved ones who have to endure his exhausting performances from close-range. They say that father knows best. It’s difficult to say whether mother is right or wrong this time. Thankfully, that’s up to Mauricio.

Published on September 8, 2014 at 8:41 pm
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