Which Mirko Cro Cop will show up at UFC 99?
Published by Zach Arnold on June 10th, 2009 in Current Events

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Desperate men do desperate things. With turmoil on both the matchmaking and political fronts for UFC 99, Dana White decided to be more accomodating to a fighter who might be wiling to help him out of a jam. Enter Mirko Cro Cop.

Or as UFC called him on their Spike TV hype special on Tuesday, “The Legendary Mirko Cro Cop.” You sure didn’t hear Zuffa call him that when he was an ace for PRIDE now, did you?

According to multiple media reports, Dana White reached a verbal agreement with Mirko Cro Cop to fight at UFC 99 in Germany. In exchange, Mirko is booked against Mustapha Al-Turk, a big heavyweight who Cheick Kongo viciously brutalized in the past. There will be two obvious factors at work in favor here for Mirko – 1) he’s facing an opponent that’s very beatable and 2) there isn’t a lot of pressure on him. In past situations in PRIDE where the pressure was on, Mirko sometimes had a tendency to wilt when the situation got a little too hot under the collar for him. His stay in UFC so far has been disappointing, but now all is forgiven and coming off of a knee surgery only a few months ago, Mirko will get a chance to get a high-profile win on a card that doesn’t have a lot of star power on it.

While UFC didn’t spend a lot of time talking about Mirko Cro Cop vs. Mustapha Al-Turk, the company did manage to repeat the tag line “The Legendary Mirko Cro Cop” over and over again. There was a heavy PRIDE influence in terms of marketing Wanderlei Silva & Mirko Cro Cop on the hype special. The great irony here is that Mirko obliterated Wanderlei and gave Josh Barnett a loss in Saitama in September of 2006. Since then, things haven’t worked out the way people thought they would for Mirko in the cage.

In the post-PRIDE era, Mirko’s career has been unfortunately lowlighted by the image of Gabriel Gonzaga knocking his head off repeatedly in Manchester. It’s an image that no MMA fan will ever forget, and if it wasn’t for Gonzaga giving Mirko a taste of his own medicine then Gonzaga would be lucky to have a job today as an MMA fighter. Mirko’s misfortune turned out to be Gabriel Gonzaga’s golden ticket. After an ugly loss to Cheick Kongo at UFC 75, it became clear that Mirko’s tenure in the cage would not turn out to be so pleasant. Mirko was and is living the prime example of a fighter who clearly fights differently in a ring as opposed to a cage. After losing to Kongo, Mirko headed back to Japan and ended up taking a brutal shot to the balls by Alistair Overeem. With Overeem more or less now in the Strikeforce camp and set to face Brett Rogers shortly, Mirko was left on the outside-looking-in. Making a return to UFC on a card that needed star power was the right career move for him to make.

The question everyone has is what version of Mirko Cro Cop will show up — the Mirko that was a killer in PRIDE or the Mirko that was emotionally flat and physically hurt during his original UFC run?

Marcus Davis vs. Dan Hardy the most heated fight on the main card

If Setanta Sports collapses before Saturday’s UFC 99 event, the UK fans are going to miss out on the most personal of all grudge fights on the card — Marcus Davis, “The Irish Hand Grenade,” versus young phenom Dan Hardy who made a name for himself in Japan before beating Akihiro Gono and Rory Markham in the UFC cage.

On what was a rather mundane UFC 99 Countdown special on Spike TV, the most intriguing video package was saved for UFC.com. If the hype video for Marcus Davis vs. Dan Hardy had aired on Spike TV, it would have sold as many buys as any other fight on the card.

Marcus Davis has a white hot feud growing with Dan Hardy over Hardy’s characterization of his celebration of his Irish family heritage.

“When I was a little boy I used to say, ‘I hate this or hate that.’” And I was told that you really don’t hate that, Marcus, because if you hate it, that would mean you spend a little bit of every day thinking about how much you dislike this thing. I hate Dan Hardy. I spend a lot of every day thinking about how much I don’t like Dan Hardy.”

The war between Davis and Hardy has extended to the online world, where Hardy fans have made photoshopped pictures of Davis.

“Dan needs to be spending more time in the gym than on the keyboard,” stated Davis’ trainer Mark Dellagrotte.

Hardy is enjoying ticking off Davis.

“You know, he’s expecting to get another win on his record and, you know, beat another British guy. You know, Move up the rankings a little further and that’s just not the way it’s going to happen. There’s going to be a lot of blood and a lot of pain, and another win on my record.”

The feud heated up when Marcus Davis made an appearance at a UFC Q & A session in London. A person approached the house microphone and said that he was with Dan Hardy’s manager. From there, the challenge was.
At the UFC 95 post-fight press conference, Dan Hardy didn’t mince any words about Marcus Davis.

“You know, he’s got a few fights in the UK now and he’s kinda building himself a little fan base here. But he’s not English. He’s not Irish. And you know, I was born here, I’ve been bred here. I don’t mind taking on that challenge and showing him that this is my home, not his.”

Davis has racked up an impressive amount of wins recently, including wins over Paul Taylor, Jess Liaudin, and Paul Kelly. He has also gone to decisions with Mike Swick (loss) and Chris Lytle (win). None of this has impress the young, brash Hardy.

“He’s a fake Irishman, basically. A plastic Paddy.”

“He’s banging on about this Irish thing, Irish this, you know he’s got his Irish flag over his shoulder and his kilt when he comes out. It’s a cool gimmick.”

“You know, he keeps going on about Ireland this, Ireland that. The only time he’s been to Ireland is when the UFC has flown him out there to fight. You know, he always says, please I want to fight in Ireland, I want to fight in Ireland. If he likes the place that much he should buy his own plane ticket and go there on Holiday some time.”

“I mean, He’s going over there, he’s beating British guys which I don’t like in the first place, and he thinks he has some hold over the country, got a fan base there, it’s a second home. It’s nonsense. He thinks he’s going to win UK fans by beating me? It’s not going to happen. I’m fighting for that fan support more than anything.”

Davis says that he has fan support on his side in this battle.

“Whether they’re from Ireland, England, The United States, wherever they are, they’re going to be cheering for me just because he’s a douchebag.”

Hardy doesn’t see it working out that way.

“I’m taking Marcus Davis’ fans. I don’t care what he says, he’s not Irish. He’s never lived there.”

The war online between the two men escalated when Davis said that he received e-mails from someone claiming to be Dan Hardy with personal insults in the messages. Davis believes that Hardy sent someone to do it. Hardy counters by saying that if he is going to insult someone, he’s going to do it publicly so everyone can see it.

Davis takes exception to Hardy’s attitude.

“It’s one thing when fighters are going to fight and we’re want to hype it up and we want to talk about how much better we are than the other guy and pick at the person’s ability to fight. But it’s another thing when you take it to a very personal level. The stuff that he did… the things that he said… The pictures he had people doing and putting on the Internet. I have children. This kind of stuff can get back to them.”

Hardy thinks Davis is taking too much offense to the flame war.

“He’s taking himself too seriously. I hope he can take punches better than he can take criticism, that’s all I’m going to say.”

Hardy has spent some time training with famed boxing coach Freddie Roach. Roach has also been helping out Andrei Arlovski. Unfortunately, the coaching hasn’t provided dividends for the Belarussian in MMA lately.

Dellagrotte, who trains Davis, says that if Hardy gets into a boxing war with his fighter, the Brit is going to be on the losing end of that battle. Marcus Davis has no intentions of having a boxing match with his opponent, however.

“I’m not going to go in there and box him. I’m going to go out there and I’m going to fight him like an MMA fighter should fight. The stuff that he did, the things that he said, I will smash his face to pieces. He doesn’t respect me. I don’t respect his power at all. Whoever ends up showing a little bit of respect to the other guy is the guy that’s going to lose.”