Mirko Cro Cop recently spoke with Gareth A Davies for England’s The Telegraph ahead of his fight with Gabriel Gonzaga at the UFC’s debut in Poland on Saturday.
Cro Cop lost the first fight via what many call the best head kick KO in UFC history. As Cro Cop is one of the most formidable kickers in combat sports history, could only make it worse.
“It will never go away,” he said. “I remember every fight in my career. This is definitely at the top of the fights I want to have again. I remember I lost the fight and that’s it.
“Anything can happen in an MMA fight, especially at heavyweight. One punch can change a fight, not to mention one kick.”
“I won’t say I underestimated Gabriel the first time, but I definitely underestimated the cage. I didn’t pay attention to elbows at all. And he kicked me to the head thanks to elbows.
“He threw at least ten very clean elbows to the head. I was lucky, or I wasn’t lucky, to be cut. The referee stopped the fight and I could see three opponents. He threw a kick and I couldn’t see the kick. It was a blur.”
“I’m much more experienced in the cage now and I have taken care of things I didn’t take care of before – like training in the cage, training with elbows, and my stamina will be better this time. Even though I’m eight years older, he is eight years older, too.”
Further Filipovic went through a list of likes and don’t likes. To make MMA more mainstream, he’d like to take out out elbows and limit ground fighting. And the Croatian is no fan of trash talk. However, he like enhanced PED testing, and adds a warning.
“At the end of the day, it’s a chess game,” he said. “You have to prepare your body and it’s very hard. Then you need to beat your opponent. Of course, there are fights and there is a battle, but they are fights fought in a special and skilled way.”
“Something should be changed in MMA – the rules should be changed a little bit. Fighting on the ground should be restricted because sometimes it looks really brutal.
“I think elbows should be forbidden because they cause a lot of blood. Many people don’t want to see blood. They want to see skill, art. They want to see good kicking, punching, submissions, not blood.”
“A true fighter and a sportsman should behave properly. This sport is bloody enough. I don’t like trash talk. I think people should pay respect to each other. It will help MMA or fighting sports to become accepted.”
“It doesn’t look good when people start fighting each other at the weigh-in or at the press conference. It looks and it sounds disgusting. Promoters should take more care about it and warn the fighters that they will be punished if they keep acting like that.”
“I agree with the bans. Illegal substances should be allowed for everyone or there should be a penalty that everybody will think not twice but five times before taking something.”
“It’s just unfair, especially in this kind of sport. Many are taking some kind of testosterone. It gives the body more strength, more power, more speed and greater tolerance to pain. The people are crazy – at the end of the day, you are ruining your body.
“Every substance goes through the liver and soon you will pay the price. But they don’t care. Give me the glory now, give me the money now, and I will think about the repercussions later.”
