Lyoto Machida

 

Born	Salvador, Brazil
Fighting out of	Belėm, Brazil
Age	30
Height	6' 1" (185 cm)
Weight	205 lb (93 kg)
Overall MMA Record (W-L-D)	13-0-0
Strengths	Unorthadox style, Karate

 

Lyoto Machida began his career in mixed martial arts fighting in a number tournament’s. Machida fought Ultimate Fighter 1 runner up Stefan Bonner on the 13th September 2003 in a bout named Jungle Fight 1 in Brazil and won. Machida also showed very early on that he had a lot of promise when he defeated former UFC middleweight champion Rich Franklin late on that same year. Machida then moved onto K-1 where most notably he defeated current lightweight champion BJ Penn

In early 2006 he signed with the World Fighting Alliance with his first fight a unanimous decision win against UFC veteran Vernon White, however Machida’s stay was to be a short one as the WFA went out of business. The UFC had been monitoring Machida progress and could clearly see the huge potential so they acquired his contract.

Moving into the UFC Machida quickly found his feet and earned victories over Sam Hoger at UFC 67, David Heath at UFC 70 and Kazuhiro Nakamura at UFC 76 all by decsion. In December 2007 the UFC arranged a bout for Machida with another rising star Rameau Sokoudjou, who had fought in Pride and had earned very quick back to back knockouts against two big names within Pride Ricardo Arona and Antonio Rogerio Nogueira. Many fans expected this to be Machida first loss however Machida showed that he is going to be a strong force within the UFC for a number of years to come as he caught Sokoudjou in an arm triangle choke in the second round after giving Sokoudjou a hard time throughout the fight. Machida moved onto UFC 84 in May 2008 and faced his toughest test yet as he fought Tito Ortiz the former UFC Light-Heavy weight Champion, this was to be Ortiz last fight in the UFC, however Machida made sure it wasn’t a pleasant one as he gave the former champion 3 difficult rounds which ended in Machida claiming a unanimous decision.

Lyoto Machida is a fighter that few within the Light-HeavyWeight division wants to fight, his style of fighting so far has found few weaknesses and over the course of the next few years we could certainly see a title shot in the offing.