The goalposts haven't changed since the last time I addressed you directly: If you admit that you completely manufactured this hogwash opinion and imposed it on me as a feeble and transparent means of countering the point, I shall indulge you in more discussion of this topic. Otherwise, I cannot, because it is pathetic to impose a silly opinion on me that is not mine, with no justification whatsoever for this:
Well all you've done from the start is trash me and say that Cro Cop would never have lost to those guys except for being shot. So, in a civil tone, may I ask you some simple questions? In an effort to understand your stance better? 1) Winning the PRIDE OWGP is generally considered the high point of Cro Cop's career - agreed? 2) One year later, he was physically so declined that he could no longer be expected to beat Gonzaga or Kongo. Agreed? 3) In your opinion, if Gonzaga had landed that head kick in a PRIDE ring instead of a cage, Cro Cop would not have been knocked out because his chin was much better then - yes or no? 4) In your opinion, did Cro Cop underachieve in the cage, or did he do about as well as he was physically capable of doing? :hat
The goalposts haven't changed since the last time I addressed you directly: If you admit that you completely manufactured this hogwash opinion and imposed it on me as a feeble and transparent means of countering the point, I shall indulge you in more discussion of this topic. Otherwise, I cannot, because it is pathetic to impose a silly opinion on me that is not mine, with no justification whatsoever for this:
1) We have a difference in opinion about MMA on a message board - why be such a dick about it? 2) You are trying to sound smart - how the **** does anyone have any opinion on such a subjective topic without "manufacturing" it? It's not an objective fact we are discussing - it is subjective opinion. atsch 3) I have suggested that Cro Cop did not adjust well to the different fighting environment, and that he suffered one of MMA's ATG brutal KOs in his second cage fight. This badly knocked his confidence, which visibly led to him fighting much more cautiously, which caused his opponents to gain confidence against him, which further affected his results. Cro Cop's own statements back this up. :bart 4) All your smugness aside, you have offered exactly zero justification for why Cro Cop's form plummeted SO dramatically SO quickly upon switching to the cage, and why he was able to find success back in the ring after leaving the cage. All you have done is call him shot, scoff at me, and refuse to address any questions put to you. So I ask you for the third time to answer a simple question. IN YOUR OPINION (and it is ALL opinion) - would PRIDE Cro Cop have shrugged off Gonzaga's head kick and continued fighting? And why did he - in the span of one year - go from the high point of his career to losing to two UFC journeymen? I say it's because he simply didn't handle the switch to the cage very well, and then lost his confidence and his desire to improve. But he was still physically able to beat both of them. What do you say? :hat
OK OK, so you are clearly too much of an infant to say "OK man, putting words in your mouth that you didn't say in order to counter them was a dick move, apologies, let's get back to the matter at hand", so we'll let that one slide, even though it was ****-poor and your refusal to acknowledge this is beyond childish. Thus, I will explain the Crocop phenomenon for you. To be honest, I'm bored pointing this out and explaining it on forums, I have absolutely no idea whatsoever why this subject causes people such difficulty. It's blindingly obvious to anyone who knows this sport what happened with Crocop, I genuinely can't get my head around why it presents such a problem for simpletons. This is the key point: when the Pride guys were coming over to the UFC, the major stars were all getting older and had suffered the physical and mental wear n tear of years of hellish battles in Pride, where the violence and physical toll was much higher on account of different rules. Once these guys came over and started losing fights, every feeble-minded fool in the MMA community was getting all excited and scratching their tiny heads and speculating as to why the Pride guys were losing in the UFC. Was it because the Octagon was a different shape to the ring?? Was it because Pride was fixed, and all the blood and injuries were fake?? etc etc etc. Er, no, you complete ****ing dimwits, the reason that the Pride guys were losing fights was the EXACT same reason as their UFC contemporary equivalents were ALSO losing fights at the exact same time!!!!! By the time the Pride fighters were coming over, your best UFC guys from the 2000s such as Matt Hughes, Jens Pulver, Randy Couture, Chuck Liddell, Tim Sylvia, Andrei Arlovski, Evan Tanner, Tito Ortiz and Rich Franklin had ALL started suffering bad losses to a newer generation of fighters, in exactly the same fashion as the Pride veterans were. Only the younger members of the UFC old guard like BJ Penn and Frank Mir were still performing consistently by that point - but so were the fresher fighters from Pride such as Anderson Silva, Mousasi, Werdum, Overeem, etc. Are you seriously telling me that the UFC's best from the 2000-2005 time period such as Hughes, Pulver, Couture, Liddell, Sylvia, Arlovski, Tanner, Ortiz and Franklin were en masse performing significantly better by 06/07/08 than their Pride equivalents such as Fedor, Nogueira, Wanderlei, Rampage, Shogun, Barnett, Crocop and Hendo??? Nonsense. When Crocop came to the UFC, he was 33, he'd been knocked out by Kevin Randleman, had punishing fights with Fedor and Mark Hunt, in addition to a gruelling career as a kickboxer at the highest level (trust me, multiple fights with Ernesto Hoost are going to leave a physical toll on ANY human body). Crocop came to the UFC in good form, of that there can be no doubt, but let's not pretend that he entered the Octagon as a fresh young thing like Bones Jones. This was a guy who'd already had an insanely violent career and was an older fighter already. In the Gonzaga fight, he got hit with a showstopper that he was not prepared for, from a big strong guy, and what made this different from the Randleman fight was (a) age and wear n tear had probably worn down his resilience, and (b) the mental effects of it being such a stunning, cold KO with his own signature move. CC rebounded from the nasty Randleman KO fine, because he was younger, more physically robust, and mentally stronger - the exact same as how Wanderlei Silva was able to shrug off the effects of being blitzed out by Vitor Belfort because he was young, hungry, determined and strong, but then later when he met a much worse KO (at the hands of Crocop) he was unable to rebound - he was never the same fighter after that fight and Crocop was never the same after the Gonzaga fight. When killers like Wandy and Crocop are the ones who get killed in horribly brutal fashion, it takes something out of you, physically and mentally. When guys have the physical and mental resilience of being in their primes, some of them can rebound well from this - but it gets harder and harder to do when your body and mind get older and/or worn down due to incessant violence in competition. And let's not limit this to the Pride guys - Chuck Liddell got pounded out by Randy and then beaten down by Rampage in Pride... and he came back strong. Then when he was a little older and had some more miles on the clock, he got wiped out by Rampage in the UFC and for me, he never rebounded properly and was never the same fighter after that. Much like CC and Wandy, his punch resistance was never the same after a horrible KO loss once he was getting on, and so he never fought the same way again. There are countless other examples of this, Pride guys, UFC guys, the organization is irrelevant, it's a fighter thing, a ****ing human physiology thing. A guy doesn't hit the mat because the outer part of the surface he's standing on is a chainlink fence rather than ropes, a guy hits the mat because he can't take the shot he gets hit with anymore. Not difficult to understand AT ALL. And I think one of your main problems here is that you have this agenda-driven, boneheaded, fanboyesque assumption that Crocop of 2007 (Gonzaga/Kongo fights) is the same Crocop that fought Schaub in 2011 and is the same Crocop that is fighting in fairly poor quality kickboxing tournaments now. Newsflash dickhead: Fighters age. And the older they get, the quicker they decline. Crocop went into that fight with Gonzaga as a 33 year old with a gruelling career already behind him, and just like when Randleman hit him with the right shot, he went down. Crocop went into that fight with Schaub as a 37 year old with the nasty Gonzaga and Mir KOs behind him, in addition a longer and more gruelling career (considering the dos Santos, Kongo and Barry fights as well by now). It is not only logical that Crocop was a more declined, lesser fighter by the Schaub fight, I'd consider it mind-bogglingly obvious. So to keep whining on about coming off the Pride GP is laughable, the Crocop of right now is so obviously a completely, completely different animal to the Crocop of 2006/2007. The fact that Crocop was not shot in early 2007 has absolutely **** all to do with the concrete fact that he was absolutely shot to ****ing smithereens by 2011. If you think that ambling around a ring in 2013, winning decisions over mediocre kickboxers, means that Crocop is somehow not shot two years after being totalled by a D-class Rothwell victim, I really don't understand how you can be an MMA fan. Why do you think Crocop stopped fighting high-level MMA? Because the money is better in the comparatively ****-weak world of K1? Crocop got destroyed by BRENDAN SCHAUB. Am I not saying this right? THE HYBRID. The guy who got ground into dust by Ben Rothwell in about a minute, and was left reaching for the stars. And this is Crocop we're talking about here, the guy who was beating up prime Nog, who went to war with prime Fedor for 3 rounds, who beat up prime Barnett, who knocked out Aleks Emelianenko, who smashed Wanderlei and Herring and Vovchanchyn. As I said before, the very idea of a barely top 20 glass-jawed nobody like The Hybrid annihilating prime Crocop is the equivalent of something like Cody McKenzie beating up on Jose Aldo right now. On the day that Cody pistolwhips Aldo, I think you might be wise to consider Aldo a shot fighter, even if he does start winning kickboxing decisions back in Brazil. Adieu.
Alright, well that is clearly infinitely better than the sum total of everything else you've come up with in the thread, so thank you. :good Also, I agree with 95% of it, as I have stated already in the thread. So for all the two-sided hostility, there has been a lot of common ground from the beginning. The only point of contention is that even with the wear and tear, I don't see a 4-6 record as being close to truly reflective of his potential ability at that stage in his career. Which is a shame, because who doesn't like Cro Cop? But his problems in the cage were due to a number of factors, and ring wear was only one facet of that. The temptation to entirely write off his cage career because of his performances is strong, but the late-career Cro Cop never really learned to fight in the cage. He followed people around without trapping them, and after Gonzaga he was visibly gunshy and psychologically fragile. He didn't fight the same way and never looked like a confident fighter, whereas Chuck always did and just found his body couldn't do it anymore. So in my opinion, his post-OWGP career shouldn't simply be dismissed like he was never "the real" Cro Cop. Because some fighters do get physically totally shot, (Liddell, Ali) and he wasn't one of them. That's it, that's the only point of contention. :conf :hat
Pride is completely ruined for me now guys, I'd heard all the rumours before about fixed fights and everything but I always took them with a large dose of salt.....Until I seen Takada Vs Coleman, that ruined everything for me, I've never watched a Pride fight since. I don't think there were many "worked" fights as in they were scripted and both guys were in on it, it wouldn't surprise me if Takada Vs Coleman was the only one of those, the reason being? it just looked too damn obvious. But I am absolutely convinced 100% there some worked finishes in there, and it pains me to say this as I was a HUGE fan of his but I think some of Cro Cop's knockouts might be a little sketchy. I don't think for one second Cro Cop was in on it, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if a few guys took money to drop soon as he hit a LHK. Look at the wrestler guy for example, Dos Caros? is that his name? He takes a LHK from Mirko slumps down to the floor like he's been knocked out clean, the camera switches view to the side and his eyes are wide open, he looks totally compos mentis. Either Dos Caras took money to go down or he just lost his nerve in there and pussied out and thought "**** this". Look at the video on youtube, those are not the eyes of a man who's been knocked out only 3 or 4 seconds prior. I don't know, it pains me to even say all this as I was a HUGE Pride fan but it's a little ruined for me now, like it's lost all it's credibility. I really ****ing wish I hadn't seen that Takada Vs Coleman fight, I curse the day I watched that.
The funny thing is reading your arguments is I actually agree with you both. For sure Cro Cop was past his best and battle worn when he come to the UFC. But also, I do think that headkick off Gonzaga wiped out his confidence, that knockout was brutal. I don't think he was ever the same after that. So I agree with you both.
OK man, fair enough. But I think if Liddell is (rightly) considered shot for getting knocked out by very very good fighters like Rich Franklin, Shogun Rua and Rashad Evans, then it is utterly illogical to refuse to consider Crocop shot for getting knocked cold by a vastly, vastly, VASTLY inferior fighter to all of the above, such as Brendan The Hybrid Schaub.
What I also found strange as well about Cro Cop is how like his personality seemed to change when he come to the UFC and that affected his fighting style. He was like a murderer in Pride always pushing forward looking for the KO, And he always had "that look" in his eyes. Look at his staredown with Wanderlei, he looks like a ****ing homicidal maniac.....and then just a few years later he's in the UFC hugging Pat Barry in the middle of a fight. Strange.
PRIDE is great for what it is, but it's a show rather than a sport. It had plenty of great fights and great fighters, but it was never going to evolve into a legitimate, continuing sport. Some of its flaws are just too deep and crippling. The sad thing is when people buy into it as being the absolute pinnacle of all that could ever be in MMA. Its greatest moments and champions count among the all-time greatest in MMA, but its record of dodgy and underhanded and ruthless **** makes the UFC look almost heroic by comparison. Oh, and: :rofl :hat
Yep, I agree. I remember before when Dana White was asked if he'd ever considering doing a MMA-WWE Joint promotion type thing and have real fights and wrestling matches on the same card and he said he wouldn't do it because he didn't want to blur the lines between what's real and what's not. And that's what has happened to me with PRIDE now, can't take it seriously anymore. Thing is too, who knows what the **** was going on, I mean how much do you think upper card guys in Pride were making per fight? Rampage said the highest payday he ever got was $100k. So let's say, your average upper card Pride fighter got maybe $70-100k per fight. That's not an awful lot when you deduct taxes, management fees, training fees etc. So we're not talking about millionaires here, we're talking about guys who could of been bribed for the right price. Like I say, it's ruined for me now. Lost all my respect for Mark Coleman too.
And even when it's legit, there's bad stuff like earpiece-wearing Japanese refs letting outmatched Japanese fighters get beaten half to death in the hope that they can somehow escape and rally for a crowd-pleasing miracle comeback. :-( Still, it is what it is. PRIDE is gone now, and any new organizations that crop up will follow the UFC model of sanctioned athletic competition, instead of the free-for-all pro wrestling hybrid type fighting cards. :good :hat
Yeah the Schaub loss is shocking. But at that stage, he had pretty much given up already. He lost his fire, his drive and his confidence. He was just going through the motions and didn't even believe in himself, and that is why he was losing to journeymen. Not because his body was too broken down to compete any more. If he had Shogun's mentality of remaining mentally tough and ruthless and ferocious even through a physical decline, he would have done much better and even made a serious title run. He had that in him, physically. His K1 victory shows that. He went back to where he was comfortable, he trained hard and showed real desire, and he won a tournament where he was the oldest guy there. Can you see a 38 year old Chuck Liddell winning that kind of tournament? His chin would have inevitably betrayed him. But Cro Cop showed that his body could still hold up even years after five late-career knockout losses in the UFC. :good :hat
