According to a report by BloodyElbow.com’s John Joe O’Regan, legendary heavyweight striker Mirko Cro Cop is poised to return to western MMA with the UFC. The news was then confirmed by UFC President Dana White by MMAFighting.com’s Ariel Helwani. The announcement comes days after Bellator President Scott Coker discussed the promotion’s interest in signing the still-popular Croation.
BREAKING: Mirko Cro Cop has signed with the UFC, per Dana White. Just announced on #themmahour. First reported by @johnjoeoregan.
— Ariel Helwani (@arielhelwani) January 20, 2015
Cro Cop, as most fans know, built up a reputation in Japan as one of MMA’s scariest knockout artists in the Pride FC MMA promotion and K-1 kickboxing. During that time, he posted wins over the likes of Josh Barnett, Kazushi Sakuraba, Remy Bonjasky, Mark Hunt and Peter Aerts. However, Cro Cop’s move from Japanese combat sports to the UFC was very, very rough.
Cro Cop joined the UFC in 2007 by defeating Eddie Sanchez by TKO. However, back-to-back losses to Gabriel Gonzaga and Cheick Kongo ushered him back to Japan, where he posted a 3-0 (1) record in Dream. While he would return to the UFC in 2009 and start his second run with a 3-1 stretch, back-to-back-to-back knockout losses to Frank Mir, Brendan Schaub and Roy Nelson seemingly ended his combat sports career.
In 2012, however, he would return to kickboxing and went on to win the K-1 2012 World Grand Prix title. He would return to MMA later that year by defeating Sumo wrestler Shinichi Suzukawa and has gone 3-1 over the last two years.
However, while Cro Cop has been largely successful since returning to combat sports, his return to the UFC is undeniably surprising. While Cro Cop has been winning the majority of his bouts, he does not resemble the man who once left Wanderlei Silva in a bloody heap. This has spurred a great deal of seemingly valid discussion that the move was made exclusively to mess with Bellator‘s plans for the current IGF champion.
So what say you, MMA fans? Will Cro Cop be at all competitive in his UFC return?
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