By Guilherme Cruz

Photo Eduardo Ferreira

Pride veteran and former EliteXC champion, Murilo “Ninja” Rua turned into 30 in 2010, but he still does not have a home on MMA. Since Pride closed its doors, in 2007, the fighter fought in six different events, but could not reach a safe place, something he is trying to find for a long time. With four wins on the last 12 months, all by knockouts or submissions, Ninja hopes for new and good things for the year to come.

“There’re a lot of things happening related to Murilo. I’m trying to define his future in 2011”, said Eduardo Alonso, manager of the fighter, revealing that the main goal is to sign with a big event next year. “We’ve straightened a good way to go with good wins and now we wanted him to have the greatest challenge of his career, to find within himself the motivation to face those challenges”, explains, looking forward to see what the next year will bring them. “It came up a possibility for him to fight in Europe, Israel and Hawaii, but everything is just a speculation yet”.

Set to fight at Dream, in April of 2009, Ninja got close to come back for the Japanese event, but since it was pretty close to the fight between his brother Maurício Shogun against Lyoto Machida, he decided to cancel his bout. “There’s still the possibility of him coming back to Dream”, Alonso said. “They even said something about him fighting (Kazushi) Sakuraba, but they’re old friends, so it didn’t happen”, reveals, hoping for a chance to get into the US. “We want Murilo on the United Stated in 2011, on a bigger event… We’re prioritizing it”, finished.