Mauricio "Shogun" Rua reveals he burst his appendix two months before UFC Title winning rematch against Lyoto Machida
The win is even bigger for him in retrospect, as he revealed in an interview with Fighter's Only that he was nearly forced out of the bout due to a burst appendix in training camp.
"Remembering my glories is wonderful, makes me feel good, and gives me more will to live up to that again," Rua said. "It was an indescribable sensation, there are no words for it, especially because I got to achieve the dream of any fighter, which was to be both a UFC and Pride FC champion."
"I had burst my appendix two months before the fight. I recall that my team would rather I didn't fight at the time, they wanted to rest but I said no. I was almost a month without training, in order to heal up. I had to undergo surgery but I still managed to finish the camp - and the outcome was great."
http://www.mmatorch.com/artman2/publish/UFC_2/article_16800.shtml#.UZCsbGS9Kc0
This isn't new info. He said the same thing when he was interviewed by Rashad and Florian immediately after the fight.
He did say something about this before but never really specified about missing out on significant training time because of it. After getting robbed the 1st fight and basically taking a gamble taking the second fight knowing he wasn't in the best condition, you probably can't describe how the guy was feeling.
He whooped that ass real good too
He said that his appendix burst eight weeks out from a fight, and he had surgery. It's pretty obvious that he wasn't going to have a full camp after that.
I don't know why this didn't get much play after that fight. A lot of people were claiming that we saw the "real," "healthy" KO Machida when, in reality, he'd just had surgery and his knee was fucked up again.
If anything, that fight proves how fucking dangerous Shogun is even at his worst.
I heard of a lot of guys busting a nut leading up to a fight but never an appendix. Kudos.
Shogun is a beast, but jesus can we ever see him fully fit, the guys got the worst luck of any top level fighter since tito.
Nothing like cracked skull or broken back.
ChokeEmOut -Devlin - Shogun is a beast, but jesus can we ever see him fully fit, the guys got the worst luck of any top level fighter since tito.Yeah but he doesn't bring these things up constantly unlike the latter
If you had a crached skull, you'd probably run your mouth a lot too.
Full recovery from an appendectomy, even a laparoscopy, is 4-6 weeks.
If his truly ruptured--he would likely have needed an open (or full laparatomy) appendectomy. Recovery for that can be twice as long.
8 weeks out from a fight? That means he would only have had a few weeks (or days) of training.
BEAST.