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Monday morning media-tion
By Zach Arnold | December 3, 2006
Wacky talk about Mirko Cro Cop in UFC, Emelianenko Fedor in Bodog & PRIDE, K-1 drawing good TV ratings for the World GP, and reaction to the TUF 5 tryouts in Florida.
- MMA Weekly: Rumors of UFC offering Mirko Cro Cop a contract
- 24 Hours Vancouver: Province needs to regulate fights: Commissioner
- GBR (Japanese): Miguel Iturrate states that Fedor will fight on 3/3 in Russia, and that Fedor will fight in PRIDE on single-fight deals
- UFC Junkie: Reaction from people who showed up at TUF 5 tryouts in Florida
- Houston Chronicle: BodogFIGHT takes major step with PPV, signing of Fedor
- Nikkan Sports (Japanese): K-1 wants Ernesto Hoost to be a supervisor of Japanese talent for the promotion
- Fight Report: Roger Gracie impressive in MMA debut
- Ivan Trembow: End result of Bodogfight PPV was less than thrilling
- The Halifax Daily News: Extreme Cage Combat 4 show results
- Sports Navigator (Japanese): K-1 12/2 Tokyo Dome show draws a 16% rating on Fuji TV (with a 20.6% peak rating for Schilt/Aerts)
- MMA California: King of the Cage 12/1 San Jacinto event results
Topics: All Topics, BoDog, Media, MMA, PRIDE, UFC, Zach Arnold | 9 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
Re: Rumors of UFC offering Mirko Cro Cop a contract
It’s not a done deal by any means, but after the Fedor situation and White’s public ‘We’re gonna bring in the world’s best in 2007’ statement, ya can’t take this news lightly. With many Pride and WFA contracts ending early 2007 it’ll be very interesting to see if the UFC picks up a lot of these guys now that ‘competition’ has become if not a real concern then at least an issue the UFC wants to contain now.
While it leaves me feeling a bit weird and apprehensive to think of Crocop or Fedor in UFC, it would probably be a very good thing for MMA fans. The thing that bothers me is that if Pride goes under or has its best fighters stolen away, UFC gets that much more dominant and has a monopoly on the high quality MMA scene (as opposed to the small venues). IMO, a promotion does best when in competition, as opposed to when they become arrogant and rest on their past laurels.
Although I’d give good money to see either Crocop or Fedor knock Tim Sylvia’s head off. Could Crocop fight in LHW? I’d like him to take out Liddell too. While I like Liddell, I like Crocop way more.
I’ve been dying to see CroCop/Liddell for a long time. Sylvia wouldn’t last 2 minutes with the Croation. I think Cop could become a mega-star in the U.S.
But I need to see Cop/Fedor II before any of this happens.
Hehe i think everyone is saying “aaaww… what about Mirko-Fedor??” to this news.
As far as UFC taking a monopoly, say what you will about the UFC but the sports that do the best are the ones that have massive monopolistic organizations running them. NFL, NBA, MLB, etc etc etc. They are single major league players in their sport, and all other systems exist to feed into these. And for that their sports are better (barring strikes and other bullshit). In my opinion, MMA has it’s best chance of success if the UFC emulates other major league sports organizations and tries to establish itself as the league other organizations feed into. As expansion continues and UFC buys into / partners with many of the smaller organizations in the US i think we’ll see this.
Putting Cro Cop in a cage with UFC HW’s will be like watching a lion stalk and mame wounded gazelles.
Not to be greedy, but the UFC can’t stop at Mirko.
He can only fight Sylvia and Arlovski so many times.
Hopefully, this is a sign of even better things … if it happens.
Re the CroCop News – I saw the thread on Sherdog by the “airline passenger” which started the whole thing. He mentioned some other guy in the post “Ken Imai” – who is that and does it add validity to the post?
Here’s the link.
http://www.sherdog.net/forums/showthread.php?t=469960&highlight=cro+cop+contract+flight
Ken Imai is Cro Cop’s manager.
Could have easily found that out and made it up then 😛 It’s amazing that a post on Sherdog could make news on so many sites.
The news is that a reporter followed up on the rumour and CroCop confirmed he had spoken to and received offers from the UFC. Although it doesn’t take a brain surgeon to realize of course Mirko would speak to all organizations once his Pride contract is up, it’s still news. Keep in mind that with Fedor possibly unavailable for a match until mid-2007 and because of past friction between Mirko and Pride (remember him almost pulling out of the OWGP? And the big tug of war between if he would fight in the US show?) it gives Mirko more reason to move to UFC where he can make a lot more money at the end of his career standing on top of the heavyweight division for the next few years. And lets not fool ourselves, Mirko isn’t going to be one of those old fighters who fight past their prime. I’ll be VERY surprised if we still see him fighting in another 5 years.