The PRIDE legend has the final fights of his career planned out, and there aren’t many left.
Mirko Cro Cop has come out of retirement, but don’t expect it to last.
The kickboxing and MMA legend is set to return again Tsuyoshi Kohsaka on New Years Eve in Japan. After that, Mirko claims he’ll fight two or three more times and then go back into retirement. The original plan was just a single fight against Fedor Emelianenko, but unfortunately Fedor’s loss to Matt Mitrione scuttled that.
“I would like to make a farewell fight,” Cro Cop said on the latest MMA Hour. “The idea was to do this with Fedor, you know? But Fedor was supposed to win against Matt Mitrione, and the way he lost, that option wasn’t an option any more.”
So Rizin organized the TK fight on New Year’s Eve and suggested Mirko finish things off by fighting the winner of their Heavyweight Grand Prix.
“The want me to fight the winner of the Rizin Heavyweight Grand Prix in 2018, and I agreed,” Mirko said. “But in the meantime I have to do one or two fights to keep my body in shape. I’m not 25, I’m not 30 any more. That’s the only reason I’m doing this, because I need interval trainings … I have to see targets in front of me. So I’ll fight Kohsaka December 31st now and most likely it’s April or July I have a second one and then next year it will be it.”
While Fedor is tied in in the Bellator heavyweight tournament, Mirko admitted he’d love to face his rival again if the possibility arose.
“It would be a perfect fight,” he said. “Fedor is a true legend of the sport. One of the biggest, maybe the biggest MMA fighter ever. It doesn’t matter. He lost a fight against Mitrione. It doesn’t matter. He will always be marked as one of the biggest, for me, the biggest MMA fighter of all time.”
At this moment, Fedor is set to fight Frank Mir in the Bellator tournament, although a date hasn’t been set.