(Photo courtesy of Sherdog.)
After Mirko "Cro Cop" Filipovic‘s ugly loss to Junior Dos Santos at UFC 103 on Saturday, it was clear that his will to win has eroded even more than his skills as a fighter. For two-and-a-half rounds, we saw a backpedaling, hesitant, shadow of Cro Cop’s former self get outstruck by someone he would have murdered three years ago. It was obviously the end of the line for Filipovic as a relevant competitor — and nobody sees that as clearly as Mirko himself. As he told jutarnji.hr (translated by Robert K. at bigoddsmike.com):
As he saw it, the stoppage-due-to-blindness was just a speeding up of the inevitable:
So that’s it, then. Don’t expect to see Cro Cop grace the Octagon with his disappointing presence ever again, and if he decides to take a couple more fights in Japan before his official returment, understand that he’ll only doing it for the money. His last line in the jutarnji.hr interview says it all: "Maybe I should’ve quit after I won [Pride's] Open Weight Grand Prix."
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We are now force to constat that an Octogon and a Ring aren't the same thing (look out how octogon champs crashed themself at pride events and vice versa).
Will the last empreror fail in the octogon against the grimm?