Mirko “Cro Cop” Filipovic, a living legend in kickboxing and MMA, has retired from competition after a shoulder injury forced him to bow out of UFC Fight Night 79 in Seoul, South Korea.
It is not the first time the heavyweight has walked away from fighting, but at age 41 and facing what appears to be the latest in a series of significant and lingering injuries, this seems to be his last.
My final decision after long and great career https://t.co/GmcBgWmfTr #CroCop #UFC #retirement pic.twitter.com/EK15nWJe7z
— Mirko Cro Cop (@CroCopOfficial) November 10, 2015
He first broke the news early Tuesday on his website, MirkoFilipovic.com (h/t MMA Junkie):
Now it’s two in the morning, and I can not fall asleep, I [am thinking] thoughts and swirling my career in front of my eyes. I am aware that I have come to the end of my martial times, but training with pain I want no longer. …This is not a temporary decision because I was unhappy due to all of that, but it’s my final decision and it’s best for me.
Cro Cop—so nicknamed for working as a law enforcement in his native Croatia—rose to prominence in the late 1990s and early 2000s, first as a K-1 kickboxer and then in Japan’s Pride FC as an MMA fighter. He was best known for his head kick, which he used to garner several knockouts in both sports.
Over the years, he faced and defeated some of the sport’s great luminaries, including Mark Coleman, Josh Barnett and Wanderlei Silva. In 2006 Cro Cop won the prestigious Pride Open Weight Grand Prix title, which required him to defeat Ikuhisa Minowa, Hidehiko Yoshida, Silva and Barnett in succession that year.
He entered the UFC later in his career, in 2007 at the age of 33. He did not fare well, relatively speaking, in the cage environment and retired from MMA after losing by knockout to Roy Nelson in 2011.
In 2012 he returned to MMA, and in 2015 he made his way back to the UFC, avenging a famous head-kick knockout loss to Gabriel Gonzaga with a TKO win of his own.
He was set to face Anthony Hamilton on November 28, but apparently the shoulder injury was too much. It also appeared to be just one of many degenerative injuries with which the venerable fighters is dealing:
I tried to save a shoulder injury and repair in all possible ways: daily therapy, injections of blood plasma and various cocktails of drugs but didn’t work out. The only cure would be a break of two to three weeks, and that I could not afford in the midst of final preparations. Throughout the summer I spent traveling…to one of the famous doctor[s] for chronic inflammation. …I have to stop twice during the travel due to pain in these tendons that hurt me terribly in sitting position, right knee which was operated four times, too. And now even the shoulder, back not to mention. …But that is the price that must be paid.
If this is indeed his final retirement, Cro Cop leaves MMA with a record of 31-11-2 (1).
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