Lyoto Machida Believes He Beat Rampage, But Randy Couture Is The Business at Hand

Machida working for a keylock on Rampage

Lyoto Machida is a fighter that is always up for challenges, but lately he’s been on the losing end, dropping his last two fights in a row after starting off his career with 16 straight victories.

While there was no question he simply got beat when facing Maurcio “Shogun” Rua the second time around, his last loss fell into the hands of the judges at UFC 123 in Detroit when he faced Quinton “Rampage” Jackson.

The opinions were split after the fight with some scoring the fight for Jackson and others scoring in for Machida.

The Brazilian’s manager, Ed Soares, says that scoring in MMA isn’t perfect, but everyone should realize that the sport is still so young that mistakes are bound to happen. He does admit, however, that a controversial loss is still a loss and right now his fighter’s record is reading two defeats in a row.

“It is a bummer to see a loss. You’ve heard Dana White before, sometimes a bad decision effects a fighter’s legacy, effects a fighter’s pay. So many different things are effected by a controversial decision, but unfortunately, it didn’t work out in our favor this time,” Soares said.

“I don’t know what needs to be done about the scoring and the judging. I think they maybe need to come up with a better system. People need to understand that our sport is young. This sport has been sanctioned now for about 10 years.

“There’s gonna be adjustments that are gonna be made to try to perfect the scoring and make it better. We may see in our lifetime, maybe 20 years from now, they may say, ‘Man, off of today’s scoring, Lyoto would have definitely won that fight or such and such definitely would have won that fight.’ But it’s definitely a young sport and it’s constantly evolving. I think everybody is doing the best job they can to try and put these things in order.”

Machida is moving on from the loss to Jackson and will soon head back into a full training camp to get ready for his next challenge, UFC Hall of Famer Randy Couture.

While the former UFC light heavyweight champion is excited about the bout, he hasn’t decided whether he’ll train in America or in Brazil for the bout. Either way, he’s ready for the challenge that lies ahead in Toronto in April.

“I think it’s a great fight. It’s an honor to fight a guy like Randy Couture,” Soares told MMAWeekly Radio. “He’s a legend in this sport. Someone like Lyoto, he’s the kind of guy that wants to fight the best. He did feel he won that fight against Rampage, but that’s yesterday, now he’s got to focus on today. The next bout is Randy Couture.”

Couture has teetered on the precipice of whether or not he will be retiring soon, but mentioned Machida by name as one of the fighters he wants to face before calling it a career. The former champion complied and now they two light heavyweights will meet in a featured bout on the UFC 129 main card on April 30.