Former Pride standout and UFC middleweight champion Murilo Bustamante will get back to action after a two-year layoff from fighting, but this time the popular BTT icon will put on the big red mittens and compete in a boxing match.

TATAME reports the news that Bustamante is scheduled to face Danilo "Moto-Serra" at the Nobre Arte training center on February 27th.  Bustamante had the following words to describe his experimentation with the sweet science:

“This fight will give an extra motivation so I can be back on fighting this year, I don’t go up on the rings for a long time. It’s going to be like a training to be a part of the training. We’ll make a training on Nobre Arte, since Moto-Serra is Claudinho’s student, and it will help my preparation."

 We last saw Murilo Bustamante in full-contact fighting on New Year's Eve of 2007's Yarennoka card, where he dropped a close split-decision to Makoto Takimoto.  Bustamante strolled away from MMA with a respectable 14-7-1 record against some monster names:  Jerry Bohlander, Dave Menne, Matt Lindland, and Minowaman (wins), and also Chuck Liddell, Quinton "Rampage" Jackson, Dan Henderson, and Kazuhiro Nakamura (losses).

Were his career a line graph, it would rise steadily until exactly it's halfway point, which happened to be when he left the UFC to set up shop in Pride, and then take a slow and fiery nosedive.  In his first 11 fights, he won all but the controversial decision to Chuck Liddell at UFC 33 and a draw in MARS with leviathan heavyweight wrestler Tom Erikson; and this streak was capped off by impressive stoppages of Dave Menne and Matt Lindland.

The second half of his career took place overseas, and proved to be treacherous territory for the talented Brazilian, as he lost his first three encounters in the Pride ring--albeit versus stout opposition in Rampage, Henderson, and Nakamura.  His war with Rampage in the legendary opening round of Pride's Total Elimination 2003 (one of my all-time favorite events) was marred with controversy over a questionable halt of the action for Rampage to pull his shorts up when Bustamante was busy working on a guillotine.

It will be interesting to see how Murilo performs at the ripe old age of 44.  As a former fan, I wish him the best.

Source:  TATAME.com

< Prev		Next >