Issue 123
December 2014
Mirko ‘Cro Cop’
2006 openweight grand prix champ
24 Fights
18 Wins
4 Losses
2 Draws
Right leg hospital, left leg cemetery. Mirko ‘Cro Cop’s kicks terrorized all comers in Pride. The most feared striker in heavyweight history recalls what it was like to fight in the Land of the Rising Sun
In the 1990’s ‘Iron’ Mike Tyson was marketed as ‘The Baddest Man on the Planet’. People bought into it. Tyson was widely considered one of the most dangerous people walking the earth. Except by Mirko ‘Cro Cop’ Filipovic, who wanted to fight him.
“That was ridiculous, not only was he not the ‘The Baddest Man on the Planet’, he was not even in the top 1,000 on the planet,” the Croatian icon tells FO. “There were so many good wrestlers and jiu-jitsu guys even then. They would have taken him down in 20 seconds and then what would he do? Nothing, except get submitted.
“In the early 2000s Pride wanted to have him fight me. I accepted and a deal was done. But then Tyson said he was only willing to have the fight under Marquis of Queensbury Rules, meaning the rules of professional boxing, and of course, Pride didn’t agree to that so it all fell through.”
Still, Cro Cop didn’t need Tyson to make a name for himself. His explosive power and killer instinct captivated fans and he in turn was enthralled by the unique platform which Pride gave martial artists.
“Pride was a very special thing. I don’t think we will ever see anything like it ever again. These days the UFC is the number one global organization but back then Pride was bigger and more popular worldwide,” he says.
“They were big rivals but they operated completely differently. Pride used a ring rather than a cage. I prefer this. To me the ring symbolizes sport and tradition, whereas I find the cage to look rather brutal. On the other hand, Pride rules allowed for some really vicious attacks, soccer kicks and stamps, knees to the head of a downed opponent.
“That’s a very dangerous technique. It hurts and it causes injuries. But that is how it was when you fought for Pride, you had to be ready for anything. Looking back now it seems crazy but back then it seemed correct. It was a total fight and you needed to be a total fighter if you were going to succeed.”
Open rules meant most of Pride’s fighters were considered ‘crazy’ even by the fanbase. But there was one who stood out among them. Known in his earlier years as ‘Mad Dog’ and later as ‘The Axe Murderer’, he had a reputation for borderline-insane aggression in and out of the ring. His name was Wanderlei Silva.
“My heavyweight rivalries in Pride were with Fedor Emelianenko and Rodrigo Nogueira. But one of my biggest rivalries was with Wanderlei Silva,” he says.
“The staredown before our first fight has been called one of the greatest staredowns of all time; certainly it was intense.
“People think I don’t like Wanderlei. At first I didn’t, but that was because back then he used to have a certain mindset about how he needed to be before a fight. In the fighter hotel he would be aggressive with people he considered potential rivals, or people from rival teams, and sometimes he acted crazy.
“But after our two fights we hung out a few times and he is actually one of the nicest guys you could ever meet. He is a really good guy with a good heart. I came to realize that his thing of acting crazy was something he needed to do in order to get himself into the mindset to fight.”
Cro Cop couldn’t have been more of a contrast. Where Silva had to wind himself up to berserker rage in order to be where he wanted to be mentally, Cro Cop brought quiet, contemplative focus to proceedings. His dressing room was an island of tranquility in a sea of backstage insanity.
“Backstage at Pride there were so many people and so much going on, but for me I always liked to keep it calm. I would rest, play cards, joke around with my team and just wait to be called up. I used to like playing practical jokes on people though,“ he recalls.
The funniest trick he played? “Bas Rutten, one of the commentators, wanted me to play a joke on his colleague Mauro Ranallo. The video is on YouTube, it is still very popular. I pretended to be furious about something he had said while commentating on my fight and I kicked him out of the dressing room.
“I was being intimidating with him and he felt it. He was really scared at one point. You never saw somebody look so relieved when I told him it was a joke. I think he was genuinely terrified. But I really like Mauro, he is one of the good guys in the sport.”
Another famous story has Cro Cop arriving at Saitama Arena one night to discover that the audience is twice the size he was told it would be, at which point he supposedly demanded his purse be doubled to $300,000 or he wouldn’t fight.
“This story came from a lawyer in Japan I used but it was bulls**t. He sold stories to a Japanese newspaper and most of it was made up. In reality, if I arrived at the arena and tried to pull a stunt like that, I would’ve had to learn how to swim in Tokyo Bay with concrete boots on my feet,” he laughs.
“What actually happened was at first I was promised $130,000 and I said I wanted $150,000 because it was a main event fight. They said no. This was about 2 weeks out. Then about eight weeks out I had some bad back pain and my physiotherapist said I should rest for a week or two, to recover.
“I sent them a copy of his advice and told them I could not take part in the fight. I faxed the written statement of my doctor to them. They called me up and started laughing. They said ‘OK, OK, we will give you $150,000.’
“And I said, ‘No, I don’t think you understand. I am in pain. So now the price is $300,000.’ They said, ‘Oh no, no, we cannot.’ And I said, ‘OK guys, well you have more than enough time to find a replacement for me, good luck.’
“They kept calling me, then they sent me the plane tickets to fly to Tokyo. I said, ‘Why have you sent me this? I am not coming.’ Then they said, ‘OK, we will pay you $300,000.’”
Cro Cop’s reference to concrete boots is no mere jest. Pride’s eventual collapse was prompted by exposes in the Japanese media about the organization’s alleged backing by the Yakuza – the Japanese mafia.
“Nowadays we have all seen the reports and the stories about the Yakuza involvement in Pride, but, honestly, I never really saw any of that when I was there, guys with whole-body tattoos and all this. I would be there for three, four days at a time only,” says Cro Cop.
“Only one time sticks out in my mind. I was at the hotel waiting to be picked up and a limousine came. I thought it was for me but somebody was saying it was for some Japanese guys. When I looked at the group there was just something about them, I don’t know what it was, they just stood out… They took the limo.”
Cro Cop turned 40 in September. He still fights in Japan and the USA and is ranked as a top 10 heavyweight kickboxer for the emerging Glory organization. But Pride will remain his defining era. It is one he looks back on with a mixture of satisfaction and amazement.
“Some of the matches in Pride were crazy. The UFC is operated as a sport with fair matches between people on the same level. In Pride that wasn’t the case, at all. They would make matches in order to deliberately make a terrible massacre in the ring,” he says, shaking his head and smiling ruefully.
“The matchmaking in Japan was unique and so was the audience. I had great support in the United States, they are some of the best sports fans in the world, but nothing could be compared to the feeling of being in Saitama Super Arena with 40,000 people and total silence. They were silent like at the opera, or watching a chess match or something.
“It was strange. Even though it was so quiet it was a very intense atmosphere. You could feel them watching you closely. There are many unique things about Japan and this was one of them. You could never get that kind of atmosphere anywhere else in the world.
“It gave the fights a kind of feeling of something like art, there was a dignity to it. And really that is what it was: at its best, Pride was art. It was brutal, but it was beautiful too.”
In Joe Rogan’s words
“I feel like UFC fans don’t appreciate the majesty that was Cro Cop in his prime. We got him after a long career... Mirko Cro Cop was a f**king savage back then. his knockouts in pride are some of the all-time greatest highlight-reel knockouts ever”
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