(They aren’t there to protect “Cro Cop” from you. They’re there to protect you from “Cro Cop”.)

Despite having one of his testicles relocated to the inside of his body by Alistair Overeem‘s low blows during their last meeting, Mirko “Cro Cop” Filipovic says when they go around again this New Year’s Eve at K-1 Dynamite it’s oddly not his junk that he’s worried about. In an interview with a Croatian website, then translated on MMA Fanhouse, Cro Cop says his trick knee has been acting up and that he’ll have to undergo another surgery on it immediately after the fight with Overeem:

“The advice I got from my doctors was that fighting Overeem only two months after my knee operation was a suicide mission. I already had missed the July bout and postponing my September bout was not an option for me. I have only myself to blame.”

“I’ve had several operations this year, and I’ll have to undergo another one straight after the NYE event. It’s frustrating to have to undergo all these operations but that’s the sportsman’s life. Many others have had it worse then me.

“Sportsman” seems like an odd translation in this context. I have an uncle who’s really into fishing. He calls himself a sportsman. Other than a love of pranks involving the threat of violence, my uncle and Cro Cop really have nothing at all in common.

The thing is, whether you blame it on his knee or not, Cro Cop did not do well against Overeem at Dream.6 in September. In fact, he was getting abused pretty badly before the repeated knees to the groin halted the bout. Now he’s going into a rematch with his knee still not in great shape, and he expects a better result?

As much as I admire his warrior spirit and his desire to enact some measure of revenge on the man whose illegal blows threatened to take something more valuable than his life, this could very well end badly for Cro Cop. Unless, of course, his plan is simply to come right out at the opening bell and deliver a kick straight to Oveerem’s groin and then go home. Which would be kind of awesome in a seventh-grade payback kind of way.