MMA Fighting’s Ariel Helwani caught up with BJ Penn, Cheick Kongo, Matt Matrione, Roy Nelson, Donald Cerrone and Francis Carmont to talk about their upcoming fights this weekend at UFC 137. Also, MMA Weekly tracked down the generally media elusive Mirko Cro Cop.
And last but not least, MMA Heat captured video the even more elusive Nick Diaz talking to a group of reporters.
If the old Mirko Cro Cop makes an appearance at UFC 137 this weekend like he says he will, Roy Nelson will be ready for him. In this interview on ESPNRadio1100/98.9 FM in Las Vegas, Nelson tells Yahoo! Sports’ Kevin Iole and Steve Cofield that he thinks Mirko is the “same old Cro Cop” that use to decapitate people with his left head kick in PRIDE.
“I must win this fight… I will have to beat him, and I will do it. I trained six months for this fight. I will do it… Some people, many people, buried me alive because I lost twice in a row. I just want to prove to everybody that I’m still Cro Cop. …I want to raise from the grave. That’s what I want to prove to everybody. That’s my motivation… I want to feel that feeling when the referee raises my hand. I want to take that shower — it’s a special moment for me, taking that shower after my victory, and I’m so happy. I go back to the hotel and the next day I’m so happy. I don’t even think about [money] until the UFC bookkeeper calls me a few days later to transfer the money… I want to retire as the old Cro Cop. I don’t know if I will be able to do it, but I will die trying. Nothing is hard for me. I will die trying.”
— Mirko Cro Cop telling MMA Fighting how badly he wants to win next weekend at UFC 137
I feel like I’ve written this five times before, but Mirko Cro Cop really really needs a win next weekend. It’s the last fight on his UFC contract and even a victory isn’t going to guarantee him a new one. Retirement is going to be a hot topic after the fight, win or lose, but Cro Cop only promised he would “disappear from the UFC” if he disappoints his fans again and loses to Roy Nelson. If he wins, it might be a different story. They would still have to “make a deal” to see Cro Cop return to the Octagon past UFC 137, but it’s unclear if Dana White and the UFC would even come to the table. After all, Dana already called for Cro Cop’s retirement after he lost to Brendan Schaub at UFC 128.
Whatever Cro Cop’s future holds, I really do hope we see one last glimpse of the old Cro Cop before he’s gone for good. I really like Roy Nelson, but man, it would be awesome to see Cro Cop send one final opponent to the canvas “right leg hospital, left leg cemetery” style.
Image via Heavy.com
I think my smile was as big as Pat Barry’s as I watched this…
A Review of Jim Genia’s “Raw Combat: The Underground World of Mixed Martial Arts” | Five Ounces of Pain
If you want to dive deeper into MMA and read the stories of fighters starting at the bottom level and working their way up, then read Raw Combat. You won’t find a better book out there that covers the sport from where it begins, underground and local fights, and not from where it is now, national TV and PPV.
Opinion: Dana White is not the right man to lead the UFC during their era on Fox | Fight Opinion
Dana White has been the catalyst for the UFC’s growth from 2005 to present day. He is the most influential man in the sport and transformed UFC into an MMA empire. He avoided the kinds of pitfalls that doomed promotions like the WFA, the IFL, Affliction, PRIDE, DREAM, and Strikeforce. Thanks to Zuffa’s connections with Ari Emanuel, the promotion was able to bank a seven year, $700 million USD contract with Fox Sports to air UFC content on various Fox-related platforms.
Dana White was the right man at the right time to get the UFC to this business point. However, he is not the right man moving forward.
The Nick Diaz Phenomenon | MMA Fighting
For years, Nick Diaz has been an enigma to many on the outside looking in. His friends and teammates say he is fiercely loyal, hard-working and yes, even kind-hearted. But we rarely see that side of him. The public face of Diaz is usually scowling, irritable and contemptuous.
That duality may well be an accurate portrayal of Diaz in his private and public settings, and it may not be a bad thing. Because Diaz’s personality perfectly fits into a sport like MMA. To his fans, he’s an ass-kicking, counterculture anti-hero. To his detractors, he’s an overrated, irascible ingrate. Whatever the case, he’s undeniably a one-man MMA phenomenon.
Roy Nelson enlisted Frank Mir to help him train for Mirko Cro Cop at UFC 137 | NBC Sports
Big Country has enlisted the help of Frank Mir, the man who most recently defeated Nelson at UFC 130, to help prepare him for his UFC 137 fight against Mirko Cro Cop.
Hot Potato: 18 Photos of ProElite Ring Girl Jennifer Swift (aka ‘Ms. Tapout’) | Cage Potato
Jennifer Swift is a model and writer for TapouT Magazine and co-host on B-Real TV who was recently hired as a ring girl for ProElite. She can throw ‘bows with the best of them, and apparently those things are real. Check out some of our favorite Jennifer Swift photos in the gallery above, follow Ms. Tapout on Facebook and Twitter, and look out for her during the HDNet broadcast of “Big Guns” on November 5th.
Is UFC 137 Still Worth the Money Without Georges St-Pierre? | Bleacher Report
Each person will have to make his or her own choice when it comes to buying this and any UFC event, but before you decide to say “no” to this one, please take the time to check out the top five reasons why you should be rushing to your cable box to order UFC 137.
Paul Daley Hopeful for return to UFC | LowKick
“I can be an asset to the UFC. There’s a big opportunity for me to come back to the UFC, established fighters always find their way back. There’s loads of interesting match-ups. There’s the Nick Diaz rematch, which would be a nice opportunity if he lost to BJ Penn. There’s Anthony Johnson, even though me and him get on well, then you’ve got Rory MacDonald, who’s a good up-and-coming fighter. “
Live 3D UFC Pay-Per-Views Coming to a Theater Near You | 5thRound
“By partnering with Cinedigm, we’re taking the UFC viewing experience to a whole new level,” said UFC president Dana White. “For the first time ever, fight fans can watch a UFC pay-per-view card in 3D at theaters across the country.
“We want UFC fans to have the best viewing experience possible and now they get a chance to experience major UFC pay-per-views in 3D.”
Watch Bas Rutten fight a crew of zombie puppets | MiddleEasy
If civilization was forced to restart due to some cataclysmic event (like a zombie apocalypse) experts believe Bas Rutten will not be the person to lead humanity back to normality. ‘Experts’ being my friends who sincerely believe zombies taking over the city of Los Angeles is a plausible scenario. In fact one of my friends is so adamant about this seemingly improbable event that he has moved from Los Angeles to a mountain in Colorado and has set up hidden provision stations near his house just in case he finds himself away from his residence at the exact time when the undead began to rise and take over the planet.
TUF Enough: MMAmania interview exclusive with UFC 137′s Roy Nelson | MMA Mania
“I feel standing, like I think I’ve stood up with some of the best heavyweights in the world. I stood up with Junior [dos Santos] so like, I think I might regress for this fight and go back to my roots, go back to my first five or six wins were all submissions. Maybe I’ll regress in the chain of being an MMA fighter.”
Dan “Punkass” Caldwell from The TapouT Crew at NYCC 2011 | TheFightNerd
“I think Kenny [Florian] is a really exciting fighter in his past matches, he just needs to fight the right people… me personally, I think the 155 lb. division looks a little more inviting again. I think he should go back to 155 and try his hand there. Some of those guys would match up better with his style.”
ProElite Signs Multi-Year TV Deal With HDNet | MMA Payout
ProElite announced a new multi-fight, multi-year TV deal with HDNet last night during Inside MMA’s live broadcast debut on the network. The first ProElite televised event on HDNet will be “HDNet Fights: ProElite – Big Guns”, taking place at the iWireless Center in Moline, IL on November 5th.
Zach Arnold over at FightOpinion.com has got a solid piece up on what appears to be the impending demise of K-1, the once-great Japanese promotion responsible for organizing some of the greatest striking-only tournaments in the world. The company behind the promotion, the Fighting and Entertainment Group (FEG), is struggling, and maybe there are buyers out there waiting to swoop in or maybe there aren’t. The bottom line is K-1 is in trouble. “K-what?” you may ask? Yeah, that’s the problem. In the U.S., K-1 never really got that big. But it was huge in Japan, and in other parts of the world where kickboxing is the equivalent of what Western boxing is here in terms of acceptance and popularity. “Okay, but what does K-1 have to do with the sport of mixed martial arts?” you may ask? Aside from the organization’s brief and sometimes comical forays into MMA (Royce Gracie versus sumo wrestler Akebono Taro, anyone?), K-1 has always been the stand-up fighting equivalent of the Abu Dhabi submission wrestling tournament, i.e., the place where the elite compete in an important facet of mixed martial arts. When someone steps into the Octagon and Joe Rogan says they’re an Abu Dhabi champ, you just know they’re a badass on the ground; conversely, if Rogan says they’re a K-1 champ, the general rule is DO NOT MESS WITH THEM ON THE FEET. Seriously, with fighters having to get through regional tournaments to even get a whiff of competing in the World Grand Prix, and the World Grand Prix featuring the absolute best of the best… well, let’s just say to excel you have to be really durable and really good. Still unconvinced of the link between K-1 and MMA, and why you should care that K-1 might go the way of the dinosaur? Then consider the following “links” between K-1 and the MMA world.
-Mirko “Crocop” Filipovic – What, did you think Crocop purchased those devastating high-kicks at Walmart? No! While the Croatian kickboxer never actually won a grand prix per se, he at various times smoked those who were considered the best guys (like Jerome Le Banner, Mike Bernardo and Peter Aerts), and when he lost, it was usually because he was nursing an injury sustained from destroying someone just prior. Such performances gained him entry into PRIDE and the MMA world, and with a pretty damn good knack for avoiding takedowns (or avoiding trouble on the ground), he soon became one of the most feared fighters on PRIDE’s roster and eventual champion.
-Alistair Overeem – A true renaissance man when it comes to combat sports, Overeem has seen success both in the realm of MMA and K-1, winning titles in both. And sure, maybe being bitten by a radioactive horse gave him superpowers, but you can’t take away from the fact that he has great technical skill – skill that’s enabled him to defeat the likes of Aerts and Tyrone Spong in K-1 and Todd Duffee and Kazuyuki Fujita in mixed martial arts.
-Semmy Schilt – Schilt only fought in the UFC twice, dropping Pete Williams with kicks from all the way across the cage and falling to Josh Barnett after that, but he was hella experienced when it came to the Japanese organization Pancrase, and he was always good for an entertaining ass-kicking in PRIDE (sometimes given, sometimes received). However, when it came to K-1, he was an absolute monster. Seriously, at about eleven-feet tall, he could land strikes from other zip codes. He’s won four K-1 grand prix tournaments, and Dutch mothers alternate between telling kids that he’s a hero that they should aspire to and a demon that will steal their souls if they’re bad.
-Maurice Smith – If your first exposure to the UFC was on SpikeTV, you’re going to have no idea who this guy is, so let me give you a history lesson, son. Once upon a time a human bulldozer named Mark Coleman ruled the Octagon, and the order of the day was that no kickboxer ever stood a chance against a wrestler, let alone a wrestler like Coleman. Then came Smith, who was one of the best Americans to ever compete in K-1 (he never won a grand prix, but he did well enough). Smith weathered Coleman’s storm on the ground, escaped back to the feet and picked him apart – establishing that, with the right training, a deadly striker could succeed at mixed martial arts.
-Bob Sapp – By virtue of being a gigantic human being and ex-NFL player, Sapp saw some success in his early K-1 career. Which was aggravating, because he was taking out K-1 superstars with relatively little training and skill. He’s gone winless since 2005, which is right about when everyone figured out he’s good for one bumrush before his lungs explode. But the dude who had a legendary fight against Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira in PRIDE deserves at least some recognition for his K-1 accomplishments.
UFC 137 is official.
UFC 137 “St. Pierre vs. Diaz” is scheduled to take place at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas, Nevada on Saturday, Oct. 29, and will air live on pay-per-view at 9pm ET/6pm PT. The card will be headlined by a welterweight title fight between UFC champion Georges St. Pierre and Strikeforce champion Nick Diaz.
“This is the fight the world wants to see,” UFC President Dana White said. “GSP has absolutely dominated everyone in his path over the last five years and he’s on his way to becoming the greatest welterweight of all-time. Diaz has been on a tear himself and a lot of people think he’s the guy to end GSP’s reign. On Oct. 29, we’re going to see a welterweight title superfight.”
Other bouts announced for the card include BJ Penn vs. Carlos Condit, Cheick Kongo vs. Matt Mitrione, Mirko Cro Cop vs. Roy Nelson and Hatsu Hioki vs. George Roop.
Ticket info below.
Tickets will be priced at $1000, $750, $500, $300, $200 and $100. They can be purchased at at all Las Vegas Ticketmaster locations, by phone at (800) 745-3000 or online at Mandalaybay.com or Ticketmaster.com.
The latest UFC 137 fight card and event info can be found in our fight cards section.
If you didn’t have a spare 40 minutes to check out the full-length Chael Sonnen Q&A from last weekend, MMA Fighting went ahead and condensed it for you into a 10-minute highlight clip. I’m sure you Chael Sonnen fans out there will love it.
Who is that guy…Chael Sonnen…I remember his face…I’m not the first one on which he had target on. When I was on UFC event last time I talked to some high ranked UFC official asking about this guy and saying: is he really crazy or just hungry for shameless promotion? The guy at UFC told me: He’s both. So that says it all. he is both a crazy person and hungry of promotion.I’m not angry or anything at Sonnen, but I will say one thing, I hope nobody gets offended, I dont wanna sound disgusting and I am certainly not fan of any anthropologic theories, but you can see on that guy’s face that he is limited and stupid and his IQ is not higher than the size of the shoes he’s wearing. His way of communication, his idiotic talks and mockery about legends such as Minotauro, Fedor, Wanderlei Silva and me, the people whose fame he will NEVER reach. I can’t be mad at him because he doesn’t understand some things, like a little child. To be angry at him would be equal for me being angry at my little son who does funky things around the house all the time… He’s child and he doesn’t understand, I cant be angry at him! Saying that fights in Japan were fixed and that me along with other guys like Silva,Minotauro etc. did not win those fights legitimately is an ultimate and absurd nonsense. I broke people’s bones, tore muscles, ribs, faces, inflicted some serious and heavy damages to my oponnents etc…I got hurt myself too from serious attacks…that is far far away from any fix and it just sounds incredible how this guy that cannot do anything for himself other than babble cannot do the job in the ring and get attention with his fights, not with his trash talk… I can’t believe that somebody would take this guy seriously. He barks like the dog, desperately trying to promote his fights because he doesnt know any other way, certainly not with his fights. He graduated with a degree in bullshitting. So he is not an ordinary idiot, he is an idiot that has diploma in bullshitting. This is democracy, any idiot can say whatever they want. I just wish if he had 20 kilos more (40+ pounds more), I would kick his ass so hard that the steam would be blowing out of his rude ass. Or maybe if he comes in Croatia as a tourist one of these days, I hope to find him at the beach and make a little “conversation with him”.
— Mirko “Cro Cop” in an interview with Gol.hr (transcribed by Sherdog.net via Middle Easy) responding to Chael Sonnen’s comments about him
I think it’s safe to say that Mirko Cro Cop isn’t a fan of Chael Sonnen’s schtick. Cro Cop probably took a little more personally than he should have — I honestly don’t know how anyone takes anything Sonnen says seriously anymore — but it would be pretty interesting to watch Mirko’s “conversation” with Chael. I’m not sure that’s a conversation Sonnen would want to have. Or maybe it is…
Mirko Cro Cop will get one last chance in the UFC after all. Despite Dana White’s declaration that Cro Cop was done following his loss to Brendan Schaub at UFC 128, multiple reports are suggesting that Cro Cop will meet Roy Nelson at UFC 137. Mirko first broke the news on Croation website GOL.hr. Then follow-up reports from Fighters Only and MMA Weekly confirmed the fight is in the works.
A heavyweight bout is in the works for UFC 137 in October with Roy ‘Big Country’ Nelson taking on Mirko Cro Cop.
The bout was confirmed to MMAWeekly.com by sources close to the match-up on Wednesday. Cro Cop first announced the pending fight to a Croatian television station.
Despite Mirko’s sharp decline, it could end up being a good fight. Cro Cop didn’t look like the Mirko of old when he fought Schaub, but he definitely made it a fight right up until the moment he got knocked out in the third round. I imagine Nelson will be the favorite, but I do think it’s a winnable fight for Cro Cop. He’s obviously done and out of the UFC if he loses, but what if he wins?
Image via Dave Mandel for Sherdog
Rundown of today’s news stories…
Mirko Cro Cop is going for it one last time. Surprisingly enough it looks like he’ll be doing it in The UFC after all. There’s no word on his opponent as of now, but here’s the full story. Another interesting note, Dana is ok with Mirko’s choice even though he said something along the lines of ‘Mirko is done.’ following the loss to Brendan Schaub.
Apparently, The UFC is bracing itself for less than stellar numbers leading into UFC 130, but who can really blame them after losing the shows intended and highly anticipated rematch between lightweight king Frank Edgar and deserving contender Gray Maynard?
5 fights are now official for UFC 134: Rio. Paulo Thiago will be taking on other welterweight up-and-comer David Mitchell. Edson Mendes Barboza Jr. takes on Ross Pearson, and Thiago Tavares will fight Spencer Fisher. Luiz Cane looks to beat Stanislav Nedkov in his UFC debut. The main event is still as expected to be Anderson Silva and Yushin Okami.
Firas Zahabi has now joined in the talks about GSP and Nick Diaz potentially fighting next. Check out the full interview here. In short, Firas basically says he has no inside information, but he knows that Georges would likely take the fight should it become available.
Check back later for more updates.
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