MMA Fighting - DAMN! They Were Good | Right Leg Hospital, Left Leg Cemetary: The Legend Of Mirko Cro Cop

Episode Date: December 31, 2023

DAMN! They Were Good celebrates the careers of our favorite fighters in MMA history. On this episode, the MMA Fighting staff takes a deep dive into the legendary career of Mirko Cro Cop. Making a name for himself in kickboxing as one of the most exciting fighters in K-1, Mirko Cro Cop transitioned to MMA in 2001 and quickly became one of the standout fighter in Pride FC. Leaving a trail of unconscious bodies in his wake thanks to his devastating left high kick, Cro Cop became one of the most accomplished and beloved heavyweights in history, most notably winning the Pride Openweight Grand Prix in 2006 and serving as one-half of the Fight of the Decade against Fedor Emelianenko. A disappointing sting in the UFC followed but Cro Cop then found new life with a late career resurgence that saw him claim a K-1 world title and win the RIZIN Openweight Grand Prix in 2016 before hanging up the gloves for good in 2019 following a stroke. What were the most iconic performances and what were our favorite memories from Cro Cop's career? Listen in as the MMA Fighting crews remembers remembers one of the most devastating strikers in MMA history. Follow Jed Meshew: @JedKMeshew Follow Shaheen Al-Shatti: @shaunalshatti Subscribe to MMA Fighting Check out our full video catalog Like MMA Fighting on Facebook Follow on Twitter Read More: http://www.mmafighting.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Support for this show comes from the Audible Original, the downloaded two. Ghosts in the Machine. The Earth only has a few days left. Rosco Cudulian and the rest of the Phoenix colony have to re-upload their minds into the quantum computer, but a new threat has arisen that could destroy their stored consciousness forever. Listen to Oscar winner Brendan Fraser reprise his role as Rosco Cudulian in this follow-up to the Audible Original Blockbuster. The Downloaded, it's a thought-provoking sci-fi journey where identity, memory, and morality collide. Robert J. Sawyer does it again with this much-anticipated sequel that leaves you asking,

What are you willing to lose to save the ones you love? The Downloaded 2, Ghosts in the Machine. Available now, only from Audible. Support for this show comes from the Audible original, The Downloaded 2. Ghosts in the Machine. The Earth only has a few days left. Rosco Cudullian and the rest of the Phoenix colony have to re-upload their minds into the quantum computer, but a new threat has arisen that could destroy their stored consciousness forever.

Listen to Oscar winner Brendan Fraser reprised his role as Rosco Cudulian in this follow-up to the Audible Original Blockbuster, The Downloaded. It's a thought-provoking sci-fi journey where identity, memory, and morality collide. Robert J. Sawyer does it again with this much-anticipated sequel that leaves you asking, what are you willing to lose to save the ones you love? The downloaded two, Ghosts in the Machine, available now only from Audible. Everybody, my name is Jed Meshima. I'm a writer for MMAFighting.com's terrific website, and this is a terrific podcast because it is damn! They were good in audio exploration into the lives and careers.

of basically our favorite fighters of all time. And this week, you already know what's happening. We're talking about the legend himself, Mirko Filipovich, aka Mirko Kro Krop. Before we get into all things, Krookop, joining me this week, the right leg hospital to my left leg cemetery, none other than Mr. Shaheen al-Shadhi.

That's right, it's just a two-man crew. Shaheen, how we're feeling about Mirko Kro Kro-Kop? Feeling wonderful, feeling good. I've been excited for this one. mostly was excited to do the research for this one because it's been a little bit man it's been a little bit since I've been able to dive in on some miracle crow cop tape watch some old fights some stuff I had remembered some stuff I didn't remember kind of deep dive into the kickboxing in a way that I hadn't in a really long time it was fun it was a fun time and I'm excited for this

I had such a fun time and I know that that's kind of the refrain we say for all of these but But the last few, it's really been true. You know, we did Mark Hunt recently, and Mark Hunt has such a deep kickboxing resume that that is super fun. We do Brock Lesnar. Brock Lesnar was interesting to talk about, but it took about five minutes to watch all the Brock highlights. Crow Cop has 50-some-odd fights plus his kickboxing bouts.

Like, there's so much of it. And it was, I'll be honest with you, one of my favorite parts of the whole prep for this, Shaheen, the second career, the extent. ended life of Mirko Krokop because obviously, and we will talk all about the whole career, but the bulk of it, the thing that people remember the most, it's pride, right? Like, that's where he cut his teeth, made his name. And then his UFC run is underwhelming. It's easily the weakest part of his career to even go back and rewatch.

It's frankly not, of all the fights I rewatch, the least fun I had was watching the UFC stuff. It just didn't, they were oil and water somehow. They did not mesh in the way that you would have hoped. But then you can kind of forget because I certainly didn't remember it nearly as much of how much of a post-UFC career he had, the rise and run, fighting just a bunch in Japan for different promotions, the dream stint during his UFC run. Like, this man got written off in like, oh, wait, and still is doing big things like in the mid-2010.

So I had a wonderful time looking at the totality of his resume, not just the pride stuff. He ended his career on a 10-fight win streak. Just a hero. Ten-five win streak. Man did it right. He finished the UFC stuff. I was just like, you know, I'm just going to go collect victories across the world for the rest of my career. That is how you do it.

Also, I had no idea that he fought in Bellator, and I'm pretty sure I covered that card. If you could have asked me a week ago, like, hey, Sean, about $100, did Mirko Crocote fight in Bellator? I would have told you no one. I would have been pretty confident about it, and I would have had to give you $100. See, I did remember that one because that was. one was right after that is when he suffered the stroke that ultimately kind of leads to him retiring from combat sports. But I just remember that happening because hours of the time we're like,

all right, it's going to be just so far past its best by date. But I won't care. We are in line to get Crow Cop fad or two. And sure, it'll be in the Bellator cage and that'll be weird. No one's going to be upset about that, my brother. And then it never came to pass. So I honestly, thought he fought more than once, so I would have gone the other way on it. But yeah, he had such a decent career after the peak of it. It's so I don't think the man gets enough credit for that, and we're going to talk about that a lot. But before we get into stuff, just a couple of questions for you. What, you know, I usually like this one. I think it's a good framing device for these conversations. What is, what's your first biggest, where did Crowe Cop come into your life

in what fashion? This is an interesting one because I was trying to think about this, because this is usually a refrain we come to on this show. How did this guy enter your life? And I couldn't really bring it up. I couldn't remember. In my mind, Mirro Krokochop, from the moment I started enjoying this sport and really following it, he was just always in my life.

He was that omnipresent figure just like the rest of the Holy Trinity and Pride, right? or Holy Trinity and Pride, right? It was him, Fador, and Nog, and it just felt like they were there forever. I don't remember a time where he wasn't in my life or in my fandom in that regard. And to me, this episode and I guess these themes when we do these type of guys, the Mark Hunts, the Crow Cops, the Fedors, I enjoy these episodes the most because it really harkens me back to a time that is gone, a time that will not come back, but a time that was so much fun because of it was so much fun just because it felt so unique right like there were the all of these guys were such larger than life characters they had incredible nicknames they had catchphrases

they had signature moves it was like you were watching mortal combat or street fighter or something like that like miracle crop cop is a street fighter character man like come on where are the catchphrases these days no one has a catchphrase anymore like right leg hospital left leg cemetery is iconic and the high kick and just the nickname the crow cop because he's a Croatian cop. Do you get it? It's the stupidest best nickname of all time. It's so good, man. And again, just the characters, like all of this.

I love MMA. Our whole lives revolve around MMA, but we do not have the characters in that way that we used to. People nowadays think of a character, like a Kobe Covington type of like a dude just putting on an act. But like that's not what this was. Miracle was never really putting on an act. act. He was just this larger than life figure. Again, all of it. But ultimately, like, one of the

most terrifying strikers in the MMA history, right? Like, if you put together a Mount Rushmore of terrifying strikers, he maybe he'll be one of the last cuts, but he'll probably break into the top four, I would imagine. It's just, at least kickwise, one of some of the most dangerous kicks in history, and just the way that he would break people, it was really visceral to watch because it would just, it's the old, I feel like it's a cliche to say that he's trying to hurt you with everything that he's throwing. But like Mirko was actually trying to end your career. He was trying to hurt you. He was trying to end your damn career with everything he was throwing. And he was just so mean in there. You go back and rewatch some of these highlights, these knockout

highlights. There are so many additional shots that he didn't need to throw. But he was just, he was locked in. He was so mean in there. And I, you know, it was just, the head kicks, you can talk about the head kicks forever, but the minimal wind-up of it, the no hesitation on it and just how fast they would come, he would be so patient. It was just pure explosive power, and it was just ferocious, man. You see Mirko hit these dudes with these grazing high kicks, and they would just barely tap people on the top of their head, and it would seem like they would nuke them. Like they would just be done for in a way that was so incredible to watch.

Yeah, the meanness is really one. is, this struck me kind of going through his career. I was like, man, he was really the precursor to Junior Dos Santos in a way of like just one of the nicest dudes ever outside of the cage. All of his interactions seem just like a genuine

salt to the earth, wonderful human being. But he can flip that switch in there. I mean, do you want to stare down with Vandalay Silva? How many human beings have ever want to stare down with Vandale Silva? And you're just like, yeah, he is equally as mean as

person rightly named the ex-murder. Like he is, he was insane. And to your point on the kind of where he ranks in the Rushmore of terrifying strikers, I don't think it's a question. I'm not here to say that Mirko Crocop is like

a better striker than Anderson. So if I think that's pretty obviously incorrect. I would way rather fight Prime Anderson than Prime Mirko. Yeah. Like I have no interest in fighting Prime Mirko. I genuinely think the only thing the only person I am less interested in fighting than Primero is Francis Ngano.

And that's it. That's the list. The list is, I don't want to get uppercutted by Francis. And then I don't want to take a headkick from Mirko. Those are like right there. Und, like his run and we'll get into it, just battering these dudes who were good fighters. And just at his peak, and I'm sure that there are some people listening to this, like, you're steroids.

I don't care, dude. Genuinely don't care. If steroids made me be that cool, I would take steroids because this man was awesome. So it was insane. His career was fantastic. And I think to sort of bring this back to where I asked you the question, I was trying to figure out when he entered my life. Because that kind of period of my fandom is when I got into MMA. And that sort of 2002, 2003 is when I became acquainted with it.

And then that's my high school years. And then over high school, I got progressively deeper and deeper into it, sort of culminating with the ultimate fighter happening and now MMA being much more accessible versus me just being a forum nerd. I think my first one was that I was like real time aware of was the big nog fight, which I'm sure we'll talk about a little bit. And it was through that because I remember going back and looking at highlights of Igor and Heath Haring and those fighters.

beforehand. I wasn't there for that part of the ride, but I was there for the Noggin, the myth of Nog, kind of being even further established as overcoming this terrible adversity, and look at what he did to this Mirko Krokoop guy who is a killer, and then you go back and you realize, oh, Mirko actually is a killer. He is murdering these people. And then he just kept doing it. That was the start of an unbelievable run that 2004 basically through 2006 is one of the best runs you're ever going to see in this sport. I'm really excited to get into it. And so let's not Dilly Dally this week, Sheen.

I'm interested. I think we might have a shorter episode this week with only two of us instead of three or four to really get bogged down deep in the remembrance of some dude conversations. But with Mirko Kerkop, we might get bogged down anyway because there's so much to get into. Do you have anything you want to jump in with before we get to the categories? Good, sir. I don't know if there's anything specifically, but again, just looking around and re-watching old videos and looking at different people talking about Miracle, there's so much good stuff out there.

You stumble across things like the famous picture. There's a picture of his body kick knockout of Heath Herring, where his leg is basically halfway through, like Heath's spinal cord, with how much he's. cave in this man's body. There's just so many different examples. There's a Josh Barnett, there's a video of him telling a story to Joe Rogan. Oh, the Rogan story. It's great. About he's like training with Mirko years after they fought in Vegas with him and Eric Paulson and like Mirko's trying to correct him on how to throw a lead hook. And he ends up just trying to do to show it to demonstrate it on Eric Paulson. And it just rips the pad apart and the

entire room is just silent. And everybody in there is just like, what the hell? Did we just watch? And Mirko's just like, yeah, you know, that's how you do it. It's just, it's a fantastic. I found that story. It's such a good story. I included in the quote section. I have Barnett being like, because at the end of the story, he's like, I took that.

I was getting him with that from him. I fought him three times. It's like, it's such a good quote. Yeah. There's so much about him out there. It just, it goes back to what I said at the top of just these larger than life figures. And it does make me pine. for the days, also where we would see the best fighters in the world, in particular the best

heavyweights, which are obviously the most circus type of attraction, just these big dudes, being able to occasionally fight absolute tomato cans for no reason other than just stay busy and get a cool highlight. And there's so many of these with Mirko and Fador has them too. And like, just that era was very much about it. But I love it so much of just like, you're watching something and then all of a sudden it's a Mirko just fighting a dude and a karate game. It's like, I wonder what this is going to go.

Dude, it has really struck me as we have gone through, because certainly the back end of 2023, we have done a lot of pride legends intentionally. Like I wanted to go back through those. Those are some of my favorite fighters. It was intentional. Really struck me with like, man, we need to get back to that part of MMA.

Every fight doesn't need to be the best guys we can get going. at least not at heavyweight. Look, it like lightweight, yes. Just have the best dudes go because there's so many good ones. They're like six good heavyweights, so screw it. Like, it's fine if Tom Aspinall defends his interim real UFC heavyweight title against random dude. I genuinely let Chyersenio Rosa strike fight Tom Aspinall because it will be so fun. And there's no reason not to.

Like we can have the good fights. We don't have enough fighters to have all good fights. You know what I'm saying? I would take it even further than you. Screw Jarzanio Rosenberg. Like if Tom Aspinall is just going to be out for the next year, waiting for this dumb heavyweight situation to play out, let him fight some fat karate guy or let him fight some sumo wrestler

as like an open weight just like showcase on a random pay-per-view. Tell me, you know, people wouldn't be interested in that. Like, that is the, you keep interest in Tom Aspinall because he gets to knock out two random, fat guys while he's waiting for John Jones. You can use that. Like, this is, we keep his memory in people's minds. Like, why can't we have fun like this anymore?

I love it. It would be so fun. And, like, that was, I know that, like, there's a certain subset of people like, pride is stupid. I was like, actually, that was kind of the best part about pride. We're going to talk about a man named Ibrahim Magamatov, which is one of the silliest fights that's ever been made. and it's great because it's just like perfect.

This man was perfect. His career was perfect. I do have one more question that I realized I wrote down, but I forgot. And it's a serious and important one. Has there ever been a man more intimidating who is associated with the Duran Duran song? Because I love that Wild Boys, it's just like perfect. It's so silly and so perfect. It never made sense.

Even in the moment, it was just like, how is this working? There's no feasible way that, this works. If you, if you, if you present this man to somebody who has never, never seen him before, just describe his life story and sort of what he's about, right, like hospital, left leg cemetery and everything that he's about. And you're like, hey, pick a walkout song for this guy. Something that would be fitting for just this guy's really intimidating aura. Wild boy, like, Durand, Duran Duran would be 400th on the list. Like, it's just, it would never come up. And I don't, like, the fact that it ends up working in the way it does is, frankly,

incredible. I love it. It's, I mean, and it does work so well. And that's, you know, when you've talked about it as our preamble here, have been like, yeah, these guys felt like street fighter characters with signature moves and sort of a gimmick or a bit, like, yeah, we need to get back to that. We need fighters to have like a ridiculous walkout song and only built, beat people by kicking them in the face. It's awesome. It was so much fun to go back and look through Mirko's career. Dude, for that reason. It's a real missed opportunity. If during Francis and Gano's reign, we had named his uppercut or something like that.

And we had given this man a signature, like, walkout song and just like really design this. Maybe it's the predator. He walks out with the predator mask or something. Like we, there are so many missed opportunities here where we could just be having fun with this. We might still get to have it. If he just gets to just bomb on scrubs and PFL, Francis can be our new age. Mirko Kro Kro Kopp. But let's get into it.

Before we do that, we'll do the rundown. But I didn't want to say that the reason I've chosen Mirko Kro Kho Kho Kho Kho Kho Kuh, Shaheen, it's important. It's because this episode's coming out on December 31st, which is the day of Mirko Kro Kopp, basically. The man fought 10 times December 31st throughout his MMA career. Basically every other year, he was fighting, and there was a stretcher with several years back to back. He was just always fighting on New Year's Eve, most of those in Japan,

went nine and one. And I was like, look, if there's a singular date that one man in MMA owns, I feel like Crowe Cop on December 31st is. And so it's fitting to do this for him now. And let's do a quick rundown of his career. Mirro Crocop made his kickboxing debut in 1996 and spent five years doing that. Pretty successful runner up in K-1 World Grand Prix. I mean very successful, not pretty successful, built a resume into name and was one of the top kickboxes in the world, starts jumping to MMA in 2001. He's doing some K1 stuff, some pride stuff, mixed rules, belts, kind of dipping his toe in the water until he just kind of jumps all the way in.

And it's off to the races. For the next five years, he's in pride. He is one of the signature fighters of pride. I have a hot take about that coming up later, so stay tuned. does a whole bunch of stuff. Most notably, he wins the 2006 openweight Grand Prix, arguably the biggest accomplishment of his entire career. Moves to the UFC in 2007 with the Pride acquisition.

Kind of can't really get things going there in the way we would have hoped and ends up bouncing around for a good period. He jumps to dream for a hot minute. He comes back to the UFC. He goes back to Japan. He comes back to the UFC. Ultimately, ends up going to rise and wins a Grand Prix there in 2016. and then fights once in Bellator, as we mentioned,

and then he hangs it up for good after suffering a stroke in 2019 that he has fortunately recovered from, but not willing to put his health at risk and continue fighting. So that's the career of Mirko Krookop all told. He set a whole number of records, is kind of scrawled across the zoo for record books and stuff for his various accomplishments. Took home Fight of the Year honors in 2005

for his listener to Showdown with Fedor Emilienenko, knock out of the year in 2006 and Friday of the year in 2006, ends up all told with 52 MMA career bouts and 26 kickboxing belts. And just is one of the coolest dudes who's ever done the damn thing. So let's talk about him and we talk about them. As always, ladies and gentlemen, if you're your first episode, welcome along. We do things about categories. And the first category is always the Mount Rushmore.

You got four fights, Shaheen, four fights for Mirko Kro Kopp. If you're showing somebody who's never seen him before, the four you got to give to him. And I got to tell you, man, I struggled with this. I don't know if this one was it was hard or easy for you. No, no. I struggled and I cheated also. Oh, okay. So I cheated and I struggled.

I think there's one that's obvious. I think one is absolutely undeniable and must be on there. I'm sure you'll agree. It is the Fedor-O-Millianenko contest at Pride Final Conflict, 2005, August 8th of 2005. It's the fight of the year in 2005. It's the biggest fight in MMA history at that point in time. And we talked about this on the Fedor episode, probably remained the biggest fight until Cona McGregor Josie Aldo or GSPBJPN, you know, one of those two would have

surpassed it. but when you're in one of the five biggest fights that have ever been, that fight has to make your not rush more for me. I'm assuming you agree with this one. Oh, absolutely. I mean, it's fight of the year, fight of the decade, like one of the most anticipated fights of all time. There was so many years of built up and so much story behind it.

I think that's a lock that has to be on it. And I'm surprised to hear you say that there's only one that you feel like has to be on there. Because to me there's two. And the second one is the Vandal-Lays Silva rematch, the knockout, 2006. K-O-the-year for our website, MMA fighting, the stare-down we talked about, one of the greatest pre-fight stare-downs of all time, the only man to ever win a stare-down with Van der Le Siva. The way he brutalizes Vandale, the whole left side of Van der Le's face looks like a horror movie before the end of that fight.

That has to be on there, too, for me. So this is where I cheated because it is on there, but I paired it with Josh Barnett because both of those fights happened at Pride Conflict Absolute in 2006. They were the semifinals and finals of the Openweight Grand Prix that year. If you're not cheating, I can understand you being like, we'll go with the Barnett win because maybe it's not as signature as the Vandali win, but it is the one that gets him his greatest accomplishment, probably his greatest athletic achievement is winning that Openweight Grand Prix.

But no, I cheated. I bundled them together since they fought on the same night. And I make the rules. I don't care. I'll sit on my own shelf. I want to, Shane. But yeah, the, the vandalage chaos is, it's an unbelievable chaos, obviously. Hearing Josh Barnett on that same clip, he's talking to Joe Rogan about, it's in the same

Joe Rogan episode when he tells him about the hitting the pads and all of that. He's just talking about fighting, uh, fighting Mirko, because he fought him three times. He's like, man, that open weight Grand Prix. And I'm paraphrasing, obviously, it was like, it was tough because I was watching. watching their fight because I'm about to go fight Nogera after this and the other semifinal. And so I'm sitting back there watching and I'm just kind of hoping they beat the hell out of each other. So because I'm going to have to fight the winner of this fight, I think, because I think I'm going to beat Nog. And then Mirko just runs him over basically.

And I'm just like, ah, shit. Like he didn't really have to work all that hard. And he just beat the hell out of this dude. And now I got to go fight Nog and that's going to suck. It's just like, yeah, man, and then it is. And so I paired it with the Barnett because he also runs over Barnett. Like this is, that night is obviously Pete Crowcock. He never looked better, never looked more physically overwhelming or dominant.

And it showed up in both of those performances. Even though the Barnett one ends a little weirdly, he's running rough shot over both of these dudes on that night in Saitama. And so that's my number two as well. I'm with you at principle. My next one. Here's where things got real interesting, Shane, because I went a little bit off the board, I think, on some stuff. I'm not sure if you'll have this, but maybe you will.

I took Amir Ali Akbar, the Rise and World Grand Prix win in 2016. Okay. I took this for a very specific reason. So one, you're going to notice that my next two choices are not things I think most people would pick. because in part, it was so hard to differentiate this incredibly sick shit he did in MMA. It's all just really cool. I have a separate Mount Rushmore of headkick knockouts because you can do one of those with Miracle. Like, there's all so much cool stuff.

I was like, you know what? I totally understand if somebody wants to put like the Alex K.O. or anything like that. Give me Mirali Arpari because this is a bit sentimental. I remember this happening. I remember tuning in because that was the time we're like, you know, Mirko's been kind of doing okay. He'd come back to the UFC.

He had gotten his revenge on Gabriel O'Gonzaga. There had been some issues of failed drug tests, but anyone who's an adult did not care at all about kind of how that was shaking out. Now he's in Risen, comes through. He wins kind of the first round of it. And you're like, all right, he's going to fight Muhammad on the wall. He's probably going to beat King Mo, but I don't know. You know, King Mo is not a bad fighter.

Beats King Mo. And then you're like, all right, this is old school. is it openweight Grand Prix and now he is going to fight two dudes one of them is fake he's going to definitely win this city final against Bruto Keito who's a sumo dude and then he's going to fight

Amir Al-Air Bari who was like you know at the time maybe could have been good still maybe couldn't kind of be okay he's like a big dude with a you know Grecker Roman world champion see what happens and it it was like getting to turn back the clock because I watched this I watched

the rise in car real time that December 31st, I won't do anything else. And it was getting to turn back the clock and relive the glory days of here's Mirko Krookop fighting a sumo wrestler and a big regular wrestler who probably aren't all that good, but he's going to win an openweight Grand Prix. And he clearly is probably going to piss hot if anybody tested, but they're not going to because it's rising. It was great.

It was such a happy, sentimental moment. If his career it ended right there, it would have been perfect. And so I put that on my list because I, I had so much fun real time watching that. I don't hate it. I understand. I understand the pick. I'll say that.

I don't hate it. But I mean a miragbali, I can't get there with you. I can't get there with you. But it's also important because it speaks sort of saying at the beginning. It's like this guy also had like a second career life that was, you know, not to the highs in the pinnacle of pride,

but still damn good. And also because I anticipated a little. pushback. Let me say this Grand Prix was actually really good. Like as far as these things go, there's an open weight grand prix. Here's the original rundown. Van der Le Silver

was supposed to get a buy in this. He ends up not competing for, I think, I think he got injured. Maybe I don't remember exactly what happened. King Moe ends up jumping in there. Mirko Kaziuki Fujita is in this. Yiri Prahashka is in this Grand Prix.

Amir Ali Al-Arabari. Shane Carwin was supposed to be in this Grand Prix and then gets replaced by Keith Herring, who, because again, Shane Carwin can't, Valentin Woldovsky, Bellator, legend, Valentine Moldovsky. This is like, honestly, not a bad collection of Grand Prix talent for something like this, and Mirko ends up winning it. So I don't feel, I'm, I'm not even going to defend myself. It's a great pick, Jed. Great pick. Really proud of you. Shane, what do you have for number three then? I don't hate it. Again, I don't hate it. I think if you were a, if you were a trying to capture something that sort of represents this incredible run that this man went on

to end his career. He really kind of had a story book ending that of his own making to some degree. I mean, obviously he didn't want to end it when it did end, but 10 fights is 10 fights, and you're closing it out. Think about this versus like Fador's career end, you know? Absolutely. Or Tony Ferguson's career end. I knew you were going to do it.

You couldn't help yourself. I wasn't going to say BJ, so. Yeah. Who do you have for, what's your third entry then behind the two that we agree on? So this one was tough for me because I, because you're right, I think the construction of this Mount Rushmore, some of these guys are just so much more difficult to do than others. And Mircos for me was one of the hardest we've had to do. I don't know really, I didn't know which direction to go with it.

So ultimately, I went two ways. One, I felt like I had to get something early, something before the prime. stuff, something before Fador, and so Van der Le, because those are his two signature moments in pride. So for me, I defaulted to really, like, I think the moment where he truly first broke out. And this way, and he was already a big name and a big star at this point. But to me, this was maybe the moment where he's like, okay, like, this guy is legitimately one of the best heavyweights in the world. And like, he might be the best heavyweight in the world. And we just have to see. And that's when he knocked out, Igor Volv changed it. Two thousand three, incredible knockout.

one of the knockouts of the year for 2003, head kick knockout. It was only in like 89 seconds. He was the first man in a long, long time. I mean, not a long time. He was the first man ever to really like fully, fully, fully, fully, K-O. Igor clean like that.

Like that was, Igor's 60th pro fight at minimum. And it was probably more, right? Because Igor was very much from that time where a lot of stuff wasn't documented. And he had never been KO'd clean like that. And just the whole thing is so pure, golden era pride where like even in the pre-fight package for this bass rootin's like doing shots

for some reason while he's like breaking down the fight he's always what he's doing he's like just drinking booze at the bar with some with the other guy that he's analysts and they're just breaking down the fight in the pre-fight package it makes no sense igor's down for a long long time after this head kick because of course it was a head kick crow cop jumps on the mic calls out fedor it plants seeds, it plants the seeds for the fight that we eventually get several years down the line. To me, this was just such a seminal moment for him. And again, really his true, true breakout of, okay, this guy is one of the best we have. That, to me, it represented the early part of his career the best. Like I said, I have no issues with this. I have, Igor Vipchanceon is the number one

in the Mount Rushmore of head kick chaos, because he has so many of them. I think it's his best one. I think if I was going to go sort of this way, that's the one I would have gone, though. I would make an argument for Alex as well, but we can get into that later. Yeah, also, buddy, I can't wait till we do the Igor damn. That's a man who's going to get a damn. You rest assured. Igor Vos Chanchen is just, what a violent human. Just get a gap, baby.

I loved him so much. Just the original lunatic person in this sport. Okay, so that's your number three. There's a chance we share this one. My fourth one, I, again, I wanted to have a well-rounded resume. I wanted to have it all. And so- I don't feel good about my fourth one, I'll say, before you even reveal yours.

I feel really bad about my fourth one, maybe. I feel good about my fourth one. I felt bad about my third one, but it was kind of where I was at. My fourth one, though, I wanted to include some of the kickboxing stuff. I think this is the win that aged the worst, maybe in the history of MMA. from what it meant at the time to what it means certainly now. It's his K-1 win over Bob Sapp in the World Grand Prix in 2003. It's, look, I understand that Bob Sap is a joke at this point in time.

And you can even go out there and see, like, there are interviews or things from Mirko talking about Bob Sap and what sort of happened in his career downfall. And in being like, I want to talk to him and was like, dude, what's going on? you're not, this isn't who you are. And then he tried to explain it to me and I couldn't really understand what's going on. Bob Sap has become a joke and a guy who is, I guess we can't say explicitly thrown fights, but it sure seems like he's thrown a bunch of fights in his career as it kind of continued going on. But at the time, he was not that. Bob Sap had back-to-back wins over Ernesto Hoost, like one of the best K-1 kickboxes of all time.

Like Bob Sap was this joke. giant terrifying human being. And like even Mirko said coming into this fight, he's like I was legitimately a bit nervous. Like I had never beaten Ernesto and he had just kind of mauled Ernesto twice. But to watch that fight back, that's not the viewing it looks. Bob Sap looks terrified the moment that fight starts.

And it is, again, it has become a thing we are accustomed to seeing Bob Sap on the ground and hurt. but at the time this is not the thing we were accustomed to because you were watching a 350 pound hulking human being get his orbital shattered and he is crying in the fetal position in the middle of the ring and it was just such a stark and daunting thing like holy shit this dude is a different kind of animal and so for me this one of the like this was easier than including the mirror i like barry because i wanted a k1 and you could go with other K-1s, but I think this is his most iconic K-1 performance, at least as far as I'm aware of. Broke Bobstaff's face. Like, he just genuinely broke his face. And the way Bob falls, too, just sort of cowering and, like you said, in a fetal position, just like crying, just like crying in the middle of the rain.

He's a very busy sight. And I gotta blame him? I'd be crying, too. Not at all. And you're right. Like, Miracle had lost to Ernesto, who's three different times at that point? And twice were like knockouts, like pretty bad knockouts. Like, Bob sap was, the Bob sap, damn, if we ever get to it, is going to be one of the weirdest episodes. We're going to get to one because it's just going to be weird.

It's just going to be so, so weird because there is such a, the gap in perception between who he was for the first, like, half of his career and who he became ultimately and, like, the way he's remembered is one of the most vast in the history of this sport that I can imagine. I honestly think it is the biggest one. That's why, like, I'm not even kidding when I say, I think this win is the. single biggest win, is the win with the single biggest gap between what it meant at the time versus what it means now. It was like at the time it was a legitimate and very good win and a dominant win. And now it is no one cares because of what Bob Sap became not that long after this. Like really, it is, there are people who have speculated that this is the fight that changed

Bob Zap. that after Mirko, he didn't really want it like that anymore. And I honestly, again, I can't. I can't. I can't. I'm saying, man. Like, if that's why, okay, I get it, buddy, because I would be that way, too, if Mirko Krokop did it.

I mean, I know Bob goes on to have a pretty successful continued run through K1, but yeah, like, it is just, it's a brutal, brutal, K-O to go watch back to see a man of that size. be rendered into a puddle of like pain and sadness in the way that he was. And so quickly too, because it was like, it was like a minute and a half or something really short. So that rounds out my middle rushmore. I've got some honorable mentions, but you've got a fourth to fill in here, Sheen. You say you don't feel good about it.

Tell me why. So I don't feel good about it because to me it almost feels like I might be doing a disservice to this legendary fighter by picking these Mount Rushmore fights in the way that I did because I don't. I didn't have any kickboxing in there. I probably should have had some kickboxing in there. But ultimately, if I have four fights and two of them are losses, I don't know that that feels representative or as representative as it should be for an exercise like this.

But I just couldn't get away from it because ultimately I went with the Gonzaga one loss. Because that to me is like... Are you going with Gonzaga? Gonzaga won because that to me... I thought it was going to be Nogara. Wow! No. What a Zag!

Because you have to include at least... in my mind, something from the UFC in there because he was in the UFC three different times, like three different stints. Like he was a part of his career. And for so long, the question was, what happens if Mirro Kroko Krokop goes to the UFC? And we wanted it. We pined for it for years and years. And then it finally happens. And it just flamed out in such a disappointing and anti-climactic and really devastating way. It feels inescapable to not include that because that did like signal an end of an era that signaled the end of whatever that era from Mirko Krokop was, was the Gabriel Gonzaga fight. And I think if you ask 75% of MMA fans right now, that's probably the highlight

they know most of Mirko is him just being melted by his own technique by Gonzaga. Like, would you push back on that? If you ask 10, if you pull 10 random MMA fans, do you think they know something more so than that? I think they know other things than that, but I do think that is probably the most common one, the one that they think of the most, which is weird because, I mean, look, it's a great knockout, it's a great highlight. I take absolutely nothing away from that. The thing that makes it so memorable and so significant is the context of Mirko before that and what Mirko was and, you know, this is the thing he does. does. And then it got done to him. And so it is a bit strange that most fans probably think of Mirko is like, oh, the guy who that big Brazilian dude had kicked that one time. It's like,

yeah, but why do you remember that? Like, why is that significant? And they don't know. But yeah, I think you're right. It probably is the number one highlight that people associate with him now. Which is so bizarre to say. So bizarre to say. Yeah. But it is such a bad highlight, too. like the way that he falls, the weird stuff his leg does during all of it. Like, I remember very, very specifically where I was when I was watching that. I was in my parents' house. And I was, like, in, like, the side living room. It was late at night.

I was all alone. And I was so excited for Mirko to be fighting in the UFC. And like, oh, if he wins this fight, he's going to get this title shot. And it was so dumb that they made him do this because he was like the number two heavyweight in the world at that point. and they wouldn't just give him the damn title shot. He had to show himself to the audience to like whatever I get it. And I was just so flabbergasted when this happened.

And I was worried for him. And it was just so many emotions running through my mind of I can't believe what I just watched. It was the most surreal moment of my MMA viewing experience up to that point. And it's just, again, I think it's kind of like one of his signature highlights for better or worse. and that's weird to say for a guy who has so many legendary highlight. This is, I refuse to accept this on your Mount Rushmore. This is an insane choice. We're not here to remember the bad things about Mirro Cop.

We're going to celebrate the good. And look, if you're going to just pick Anthony Perosh. He's fighting a dude named the hippo. That's funny. If you got to have a UFC thing in there, remember the hippo? There you go. That's the thing is UFC run was just so, awful. Like it just wasn't

none of the, we never got the fun thing that we wanted. We were all just like, Mirko, just do the thing. Come on. Just kick somebody in the face. Come on. Come on. Come on. Go on. And it never happened. And so it was lame. So I didn't have any issue leaving the UFC runoff. I got a few honorable mentions. The number five, the one that if I wasn't going to do Amir Ali Akbar, one that I would have. And I feel bad for this one for entirely different reasons.

that just refute it. Because it feels disrespectful to another legend of the sport. Mark Coleman. That's a bad one. That's a bad, bad one. I think that's about his peak as Mirko ever gets.

Like he, Mark Coleman, you know, passed his prime, not the fighter who once was. Still a competent fighter at this point in time. And Mirko, I mean, it is a full-blown demolition from start to finish.

It takes three minutes or whatever, but that fight is over in the first 20 seconds. It is just such a comprehensive beatdown of a significant MMA figure that if I was going to have one more, it would be from pride because that's the key run. And I think I would go this one over even any of the highlights just because all of the highlights are great, but this one is so – this one's the most brutal, I think, because, like, he batters every part of Mark Coleman. Mark Coleman is on just all. of the extra vitamins that a man has ever taken. He is the largest you've ever seen.

Mark Coleman, and he gets brutalized, and then soccer kicks to finish it off. That's the thing. Of the things that I don't want to have happen in my life, Mirko Krokop, soccer kicking me is just very high on the list. So that's my number five, if I afford to pick another one. I've got all the highlights in a separate section, like all the individual knockouts. But shout out to one, taking on Jerome L'Banner in your kickboxing debut, you can go watch this fight out there.

It's super funny because Mirko Krokoff is a 19-year-old is hilarious. His legs are so large and like his upper body is not unmistled, but it is, it just looks like you have put a small, like a small fit man's body on top of this dude with tree trunk torso. It is just, and he's a child. so it looks really funny. And also taking your own Journalmanor in your debut is, that's some pretty hard man shit right there. That's not an easy way to start off.

And Ishmael Lant, again, this is the thing that I did not remember it all when it back. He won a K1 Grand Prix. Granted, it's in 2012. K1's not, you know, the organization it was at that point in time. But winning a K1 Grand Prix in 2012, essentially you haven't really far. bought kickboxing in 10 years or whatever. You have this rough run in the UFC. You're sort of bouncing around.

You're like, I'll go back and do some kickboxing. It's like, actually, he just Fs around and wins the whole thing, finally wins a K-1 championship, something you can never accomplish during sort of that peak part of his career, does it in 2012. So I think that just kind of had to at least be on an honorable mention because, again, what an incredible post-prime run this man had. Yeah, the Crow Cop final fight, which I remember covering at the time, was 2012. And this was how it was framed.

It was Crow Cop final fight, a fight in Croatia against Ray Cepho. Ray Cepho. In 2012. And then the man ends up still going until 2019, seven years after Crocop final fight. Just incredible. I will say to add on to what you were saying, the Mark Coleman one was on my short list of honor roll of mentions as well. and that speaks to something we already spoke about, which was the meanness and the extra shots.

The surety to always get the extra shots in, and in pride in particular, they were always the soccer kicks. If you were prone on the ground and you've just been knocked up on America Crocoop, you are getting one or two soccer kicks as well before. Before Yu-Rov gets in there. If I'm about to have that fight,

I'm telling Yu-G, like, dude, when I die, please save me. Please save me before the soccer kicks. Just the meanness in some of those. Also, I will say the Hongman Choi leg tick knockout is just right on my alley. That's what I want from my combat sports. Just some circus shit like that. The Alexander Emilienaco knockout is absolutely savage.

It is disgusting with how brutal it was. That one is so special too just because of the thing. the iconic video of Fador backstage, watching his brother fight, watching his brother get knocked out. And you're like, we know these two dudes are going to fight. The story, man. This is going to happen. It took him, you know, another year after that. But it was, that was a hype, hype thing at the moment.

Absolutely. And just the story. It was all going into it. A couple others. Hideki Yoshito-KEO is one of the funniest things ever to me because this man, I believe he's wearing a full karate ghee. I could be wrong. but I'm pretty sure he's wearing a full karate ghee, and he gets tagged with the left hand,

and then for some reason, which is one of the most insane decisions anybody's ever made in a fighting ring, gets tagged with this left hand, and then mocks Mirko and challenges him to come forward and, like, hey, come fight me, come fight me, and then three seconds later, less than three seconds later, like a half a second later,

gets immediately smacked with the most disdainful leg kick you have ever seen in your life, and he's just done. He just melts to the ground like five seconds after taunting Mirko Kro Kopp in his prime. Very unadvisable decision, but you do you, Hedekhi Yoshida. You should just never, ever taunt Mirko Kro Krookob, even not in his prime. It's so it was a bad plan.

Yeah, he's like, hit me in the face, Mirko, do it. And so he kicks him in the leg. Yeah. Yeah, and just kicks him, he just falls over. And then he falls over and then he's like standing over to like, Mirko's like, do I go after them? And the rough's like, get up, get up. He's like, no, I don't want to.

do this. It's awesome. And last one. It's such a dismissive. We need more geese in M.A. We really do. They make everything a thousand percent funnier. This dude in a full key is just like, I don't want to get up. No, you got to get up.

You literally were just talking shit to this man. I'm good. I'm set right here. Dude, if my YouTube algorithm brings up a fight between a thickly muscled man and another man in a ghee, I'm watching whatever that is. Like, however long that's going to be, I'm watching it. That's how you get me in the door.

One other one, last one from me, very inconsequential in the grand scheme, but just the aesthetics of it. Kickboxing fight against the man named Ricky Nilsson. Nick Olson, Nicholson. Nicholson, yeah. It's super brutal. You should look this knockup up on YouTube if you guys are listening to this at home. Ricky Nicholson, Mirro Krookup, it is bad.

It is a bad bad. And it's just, again, goes to speak of. Is that his first head kick? It's one of them. It was when he was still establishing the legacy of the catchphrase. And you can see why. I think it might be his first per Wikipedia it is. Because I remember looking at this and being like, one, it is absolutely savage.

And two, I do think that this is his first head kick CO. I'm sure there's some undocumented stuff in there and things like that. But it's certainly one of the early ones, yeah. Yeah. I pulled it up just to rewatch it because it's it's quite fun. Man, underrated man had some nasty uppercuts too though. We'll talk about that in a little bit. One last one I do want to talk because I just don't really, it didn't have anywhere else to put it.

And I felt a little weird leaving this off, but I didn't want to have two losses. It's not as significant. It's a big dog fight at Pride Final Conflict 2003. I mean, it's for the interim heavyweight title at the time. some organizations or media outlets had this as the fight of the year in 2003. I could not find our fight of the year for 2003, but it's a dope fight. Like it's Crow Cop is styling on Nog for the first 10 minutes and then Nog gets a takedown moves to mount.

Crow cop doesn't have the tools there and gets armbard. It's like it's a terrific comeback in a really, really good fight that is kind of one of those forgotten gyms. but if you haven't watched it, you should go watch it because it's quite good. So shout out to that fight. I couldn't put you anywhere else, but this seems like a good time to honorably mention you. With Amex Platinum, $400 in annual credits for travel and dining means you not only satisfy your travel bug, but your taste buds too. That's the powerful backing of Amex.

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Our next category, the I'm not impressed by your performance award. I'm not impressed by your performance. Obviously, George St. Pierre once famously said this, and this is the category where we talk about the times that you let us down as a fighter, didn't bring your best, worst performance, et cetera. This, Shaheen, this is where you put Gabriel Gonzaga, because you're right. It is a part of the Mirro-Crop story. It's a part you can't get away from. It is, it's a significant moment and a significant thing, and I remember it kind of tells. the MMA world on it on the axis for for at the time because of what it happened and how it

happened and it was so stupid that it had to happen in the first place and all of the things that fell out from it that was really the moment I think more than any other where the discussion was oh pride died like pride has pride has finally died and it was singularly in the moment where Gabriel Gonzaga, of all people, had kicks me or Cro-Cobb. This was a clear choice for me as the runaway winner here. However, since I'm assuming you didn't put this here since you had it in your Mount Rushmore, I feel like I may know the choice you've made for the I'm not impressed by your performance award. What would you guess?

Is it? Is it Kevin Randleman the first time? No, no. I mean, that's, again, no. Because, again, that to me is an iconic. moment and i think kevin ranalman at that point like he's not at the level where i would be disappointed by that because kevin ranman is still kevin ranaldman but he's kevin ranaldman he's like the most athletic man in the history of the sport you know like i can't phone you back him out in like

four seconds that's not a thing kevin does also you got to remember the context my good sir this is the heavyweight gp this is the opening round of the heavyweight gp if kevin if fadour is in the other leg of this fighting, hold on. Mark Coleman, fights Mark Coleman on the other side of this. This is supposed to set up Crowe Cop versus Fador. Crow Crop's supposed to beat Kevin Renderman who can't wrestle him. He's kicked in the head. Fader's going to be Mark Coleman. Bob's your uncle. We get the matchup. Instead, we get Fadour, and now we get the Randallplex. So shout out to this for leading to that. There were things that led from this, right? Like Kevin Rennelman moves on to fight Fador immediately after this and gets the Randolphlex.

Like, there's too much involved in this. Also, like, this is, again, why I love the old days. That, that win sat for, like, eight months. And then Crocob got his revenge. Like, Crowe Cop fought like eight times in 2004. And, like, within the same year, he fought Kevin Rattelman twice. Like, they just kept running him out there. So, like, they didn't have to sit with that loss very long.

The fact that he fought eight times in 2004 is, like, that's just insane. That does not happen anymore. just like yeah dude just are you ready to go get paid again come on let's go dude it's awesome and they're like real fights like he he gets knocked out clean by ranalman in april 25th he's out there on may 23rd fighting someone else he's on august 15th he's fighting alexander on alexander on on alexander on august 15th and then he's fighting josh barnett on october 31st then he's fighting kevin ranalman again on december 31st like the activity level three ufc tvs heavyweight champions back to back to back beats

them all. It's been from October to February. This is going to be a bit of a diversion, like a digression, but I just want to say this because I've been sitting on this take and I've shared it I think once before, I really think the best way to build stars

in MMA and people are like, oh, we can't get it. You just got to fight a bunch. And then, like, if you fight a bunch in one year, then people will know you. Because that's sort of what Hamza did. He fought three times in the span of two months and now suddenly everyone knows Hamza. Look at what Mirko did.

He fought eight times in 2004 and he won most of those by violent knockout. Of course you're going to know who the hell is. He fought eight times. Like, do more of that instead of this fight once or twice a year and try to optimize your performance. Just get in there and get busy, young fighters. See what happens. This is what I'm saying.

Tom Aspinall. You're going to sit out a whole year. Run Tom Aspinall out here four times in the first six months. He'll go to Lama in there. Dude, Tom Aspinall, four times in the first six months of 2024, give me him just beaten tomato cans over and over again. Because you're right, the short-term memories we have with MMA, we're doing this every single week.

If four different times over the course of the first six months of this year, we can talk about Tom Aspinall, flattening some dude on a post show, it's only going to be making things bigger. It's so much easier. Like, one, we should never cut Parker Porter for obvious reasons. But, like, you're telling me that we as a website wouldn't get a, of just immensely behind Tom Aspinall versus Parker Porter as like

just an interim have like a silly nonsense or Chris Barnett versus Tom Aspinall Do it as a non-title fight. Just do it as a non-title fight. Non-title fight. Everything doesn't need to be so official. Particularly because Tom has an interim belt, so who even cares? Just do Tom non-title fight against Parker Porter in February and then he comes back in April and fights Chris Barnett and he comes back in May and fights, you know, whoever.

I'm trying to think of who's another, like, short, pudgy heavyweight that the UFC currently employs. It's, like, mid but fun. It would just be so fun. Gary Garlander over there out there in, like, Arkansas. Just, like, get somebody. Yeah, it would just be fun, dude. Let's just have some fun.

It would be great. Let this man leave a trail of bodies in his wake so that when he eventually does fight for the actual heavyweight title or just becomes the heavyweight champion, however this works out. We've just seen him all year and everybody's hyped for it rather than like, oh, remember back in November when he fought Sergey Pavlovich? And that was like 10 months ago at this point. Particularly because when Tom's killing people in 90 seconds, like, no, because he fought for 90 seconds in November. Like, let's get a little more Tom action.

This needs to be. This is a good take by us. This needs to be on our wish list for 2024. Try and manifest this happening. We've gone too far astray. I said Gabriel Gonzaga for I'm not impressed. My runner up is Kevin Randleman won. You disagreed.

What is your I'm not impressed for Mirko. To me, it was the fight right after Gonzaga. Oh, the Czech Congo. That's not his fault. It's depressing. It's not a good time. It's the most depressing fight. It's not a good time at all.

And what it signified for a lot of people, I think, is the worst part of it to me. Because obviously, this fight sucks. This fight was not fun. This fight features a lot of ball shots of Mirko just getting his nuts smashed in with no like complete impunity. Czech Congo just cheated so hard and nothing happened. He won the fight almost as direct result of it. Very much as a direct result of it.

And then it just shows on his ledger two losses in a row in the UFC. And I remember the reaction after this fight. I actually looked up on MMA fighting our write-up of this fight from back in the day in 2006, I believe it was, or whenever it was. no not 2006 that was 2007 and like is michael david smith and it's him essentially being like well this proves that he was never good that was kind of the takeaway for a lot of the people of like well this just shows that mirko was never good and all the pride guys were overrated because he's out here losing a chuck congo and to me that is like that has to be the nadir of all of this of just like

oh man like not only did he get head kicked by kanzaga but like he's losing really dumb dumb, dumb, dumb fights against Chuck Congo of all people. Like, this is a not-go in the way that it was supposed to. And so for me, that is, again, the nadir of this. I can accept this just because this is definitely the saddest fight of the entire career. Like the Gonzaga fight was just shocking. But Mirko, credit to Mirko, I mean, we talked about ending on a 10-fight win streak. One of the best parts about his career is that we didn't, we never had to go through the, this is painful phase.

that we've had to do with so many legends. And even if guys like Fador, they had a painful stretch and maybe they got to train back on the track for just a moment in time, Mirko never really had that. He had, hey, he's not there. He's not what he was. But there was never like, oh, Mirko's fighting.

This is tough. The check fight is the one fire where it's like, this is hard to watch just because I, too, am a man with Gahones. And it hurt to watch the man for empathy's sake. Like it was just, Chuck Congo's a big fella to just be firing knees right on into the, to the private bits is a tough, tough scene. So I accept your answer even if I don't, still don't agree. I think Gonzaga is the choice here.

Real quick, honorable mention, don't get knocked out by Brendan Schaub, please. I don't want that. I don't want that in my life. I don't want Brendan Schaub to be able to say that he knocked out Mirko Crowe Cup. I just want no part of this. Please don't do that, Mirko. Is that the only, like, good win Brendan Chob has? I mean, he beat Gonzaga.

He got the Mitrono win. He has a couple. I guess Mitcherone's a serviceable win, but, ugh. The less said about Brendan Chob, the better. That's a good shout out, though. That's a good honorable mention. I respect that honorable mention. Our next category, the who the fuck is that guy award?

Who the fuck is that guy? I love this. This is the best. This is the easiest. This is the easiest one of the whole damn thing for me. It's for the weirdest, strangest, most ridiculous opponent that Miracle Krocob faced the entire career. I teased this one earlier, Sheen.

This is super easy for me. I think there's plenty of way to go here if you wanted to because, you know, he has fought some people. I did not remember that he fought Rock Martinez. That's the thing that happened. Like, there are some surprising and weird ones because of him. how his career worked. But the one that made the most sense to me is the one I wanted to talk about.

And it's Ibrahim Magamatov at Pride Final Conflict 2005. This happened in June 26, 2005. You may be like, well, why is that? Magamatov guy's probably a fighter. Why is that so weird? Well, because as far as I can tell, I still don't understand why this fight occurred. Because at this point in time, Crowe Cop was set to fight Fador. They were agreed to fight at August 28th, two months after this fight happened,

inside Tomo for the heavyweight championship. A massive fight becomes a fight of the year, one of the best fights of all time. That fight is already booked and ready. And yet he fights Ibrahim Magamatov, who is a training partner and teammate of Fedor? And so I guess it's a set-up fight. I'm not really sure, but Krocop does the damn thing, beats the hell of this dude, kick to the body, ends up finishing it off. It's a weird thing that go watch this fight on Fight Pass.

It's after the fight is just awesome because it's a teammate of Fador, so Fador's there. Krokop and him like shake hands and hug like three different times. They're like, oh, yeah, hey, congratulations after this. Then they give Krokop the mic and he's like, hey, I'd like to call whoever. Who's the Pride's dude? Why can't I think of his name right now? the pride CEO

Saki Kabara? No, yeah, but he doesn't call in Saki Kabara. He calls in whoever. I can't remember who it is. He calls him one of the Pride officials, and the name is escaping me right now if you said it or get it. And he's like, hey, come in.

Dude, come in. He's like, I would like you to invite Mr. Fado Emilianenko into the ring. And so then he does. Fador comes in with the belt, wearing a shirt. They do like a face-off. it's just this so big feel thing as it's happening i was like this is the original john jones

facing off with francis and ghanu after mo green gets killed it's just like this fight didn't need to happen if it only happened to set up this moment where the two of these dudes face off next to each other in this big arena filled with people and it's awesome it was such a good setup for the fight that would come two months later and ibrae Magamatov went back to living and ignominium and no one knows who the hell he is, still don't have no interest in knowing who he is. So he was an easy choice for me for this award. Shaheen, what about you? First of all, I'm stunned because I thought there was, I thought we were going to be unanimous on this.

I thought we were going to meet in the middle on this and be on the same page. And we're not, which is just, I'm very, very surprised with where you landed. But I would say with your explanation of all of this and questioning why this happened, This goes back to exactly what we're saying. It happened because you can't. Mirko's not going to sit on the sidelines for two more months. Man wants to get in there and break some bodies. And he did just that.

Like, this was so low risk. I love it. I absolutely love it. This is all just part of the story. But he had already fought in February. It wasn't like he hadn't fought in eight months. He fought in February. What do you want?

And we want to fight in June? For eight months? Come on. Or eight weeks? I want to wait for two months to fight for four. Oh, it's not like it's the biggest fight. It's not like it's the biggest fight of all the time at that point. Come on, you know.

But that's the thing. Like, what if, what if, I mean, one, we don't know what we know now, but like a man named Magametteov, probably not a pushover. He ended up being a pushover, which is fortunate. But like, what if Ibrahim, Kevin Randleman's this? And then suddenly we're just in this world now. It's such a silly, silly fight to happen. But it didn't end.

But I mean, sorry, but he didn't. And instead we got like another, you got another little drop in the story. The story they built was why that fight between him and Fedor was so big. is because all of these little drops in the buckets, man, all of these little moments that just kept adding on and adding on, the mystique of this fight before it even happened was unlike anything that we have ever seen, except for maybe Conor-N-Oldo, because Conor-Naldo also had the same elements of so many drops in the bucket.

I mean, this has been so long in the making, and we've had these mischances for it. Like, that is the closest comparison that I can think of. But... Okay, then who did you choose? Because I have a couple honorable mentions that I am starting to think maybe you went with one of them. Come on.

I thought this was the Dos Karas Jr. section. I thought this was going to be the Dos Keras Jr. Conversation. Because what the fuck was that? Like that goes to speaking of exactly what we're talking about of just the dumb shit that people would do in pride for just to stay busy. Like this man, we talked about the Volchanikovychin, Igor Vachashkin, headkick. He headkicks Igor.

And then like two months later, three months later, he's in there fighting Dos Keras Jr., who, if you've never seen this fight, Does Carers Jr. was not a fighter of note. He was a professional wrestler who you probably know is Alberto del Rio, the WWB superstar. He was three and two at the time. Thank you very much. He comes into the ring wearing a luchador mask

for no real reason other than the fact that, again, professional wrestler, you've got to stay with the gimmick. It's deeply funny that they let him fight a luchador mask. He looks terrified. He looks like more scary. Which is impressive to pull off while wearing the loon of doorbats. You can see it in his eyes.

He looks more scared for this fight than any human being has ever looked for any other fight. And you understand why very quickly, because as soon as his fight starts, well, he's Alberto Del Rio. He's a professional wrestler. He's not an actual fighter. And it plays out like that.

And the fight itself is, what, 46 seconds? And it just ends up with a head kick knockout because, of course, it does. But, like, I just love that that's what we're doing with Prime Mirko. It's like, hey, we got nothing for him for a couple months. let's try him out here against his professional wrestler and let him do some work. By a couple of months, you mean next month he would fight Big Nog

for the interim heavyweight title. You know, like, hey, I know you're fighting for the interim memory belt in 30 days. What if you fight this pro wrestler real quick? Cash some checks, Miracle. This is a terrific call out. One, shout out to Alberto Del Rio, Alberto Rodriguez, I think is his real name, who also fought Tito Ortiz in 2019.

That's a thing that happened. I don't know if you remember that, Gene, but it is a thing that occurred because he, like, works with Combatta America's or did. Maybe he doesn't anymore. I'm not, like, super up all my Alberto Dorrio stuff. Great. That's a great call.

A couple of honorable mentions here. I already have said both names, but one, it's still quite funny to me that Anthony Perosh got to fight Mirko KroKop, like the hippo just doesn't feel like that's a dude who should have ever fought Kro Kopp. And then Brutu Kito, just because Brutu Kito is the guy he fought in the semifinals of the Grand Prix, but of the rising Grand Prix, he's a professional sumo wrestler who is from Estonia, and it's quite funny.

And just a shout out to the good old days of pride matchmaking. Our next category, the Randolplex Award. This was an incredibly difficult category. It's the category where we talk about highlights, the best single career highlight. I have four. I did a Mount Rushmore of these, and I left one of them off because there were five things I wanted to mention. If I had to be narrowed down to one, it would be the ego of chance and chaos. I think it is his best to COO and pure aesthetics.

But it's obviously an incredible COO. My Mel Rushmore also has Dos Kars because I think that's quite a funny K.O. Ron Waterman, because... Bad one. That's a bad one. It's really, really mean. And it doesn't get called... I think it's officially ruled TKO soccer kicks,

but it all starts with a head kick that kind of sends Waterman to wanting to be done. and then it's just a firing soccer kicks until the fight finally ends. Very, very vicious. And then the Alexander-Millianenko one, I think, you know, that rounds out my Mount Rushmore of Head Kick chaos. We've sort of talked about all of these. I did have one that, and my honorable mention for the Mount Rushmore of Chaos, was the Heath Haring picture you talked about earlier.

That iconic photo of the body kick that looks like Crowe Cop's foot is gone all the way into the spinal cord. It is, you can just go, like, go Google Heath Haring Crow Cop, and one of the first images they'll pop up is that kick.

It is brutal. So I think there's no wrong way to eat this Reese's when it comes to Mirro Crocrop. You could have, I mean, you could have the bobsap. There are a ton of outrageous KOs

in, you know, K1 that, you know, both his second career there and his original one, ton of meat on this bone. I went with those four for a Mount Rush. more. What did you do here, Shaheen? So I defaulted to this category. Lately I've been doing this

with this category of like, what do I feel like would be the best 30-second TikTok clip of like, what's the best like mashup you could put together for someone's highlight? So I went with the Vandalei-Sovicoe because I think there's a very easy clip you can put together of the stare down and then the knockout and just Vaderly again looking like he's been mulled by Jason or Freddie or whoever. Like he's just looking like he's straight out of a horror movie. what's going on with his face. And then the head kick knockout, that's just such a clean knockout. And it meant so much at that point in time.

It's probably the most meaningful knockout in addition to the Josh Barnett one, right? The Josh Barnett one's not as clean of a knockout. Like the Van der Le one really set the tone for that night and what that night would mean for Americo. So for me, that's where I defaulted. I mean, I think that's a great choice. The imagery of it is spectacular. The bloodied, like bloodied and battered Vandale as his like, face is just on the canvas. It's

a tough one. I will say on the Josh Barnett one because I didn't mention it earlier, arguably even more brutal than the Vandali one. Like the Barnett is taking a beating before that fight gets stopped. Like the shots to the body are just cruel in that fight.

So shouts to Josh Barnett, who appropriately, as you mentioned at the top, you know, kind of notes how hard this dude hits and was like, that sucked to fight him three different times and I sure did it. He fought him three different times after already fighting Big Nog to a decision that night. Like, come on.

Just a lunatic, man. Man, MMA used to be great. What a time to be alive. Our next category, the right leg hospital, left leg cemetery. Shane, I want to let all the listeners know. This category makes me very sad because there is not a good quote out, like a good audio quote of this quote out there, of him saying it. or somebody else saying this to interspersed that audio in here, and people can understand it because when Mirkos says it, it's in Croatian.

So it's like that doesn't hit his heart. But this is for the best quote said by or about the fighter, the easiest choice of all time. When you have the category named after you, that's going to win the award. The award is going to be given to right leg hospital, left leg cemetery. one of if not the most iconic, like quotes, the iconic taglines, I would say. Because, you know, maybe like, I'm not impressed by your performance or, like,

other people have maybe quotes that have resonated a little more broadly, but they're not taglines. They're not, this is what you put on the bottom of my fight poster. You can't put, uh, who the fuck is that guy on the bottom of a fight poster, but you can absolutely put right leg, like hospital, like cemetery, man, And that is some cold stuff. It's so good. You said it.

It's one of the coldest catchphrases ever. It's one of the coldest quotes ever. But just like catchphrases in itself, you know me. Like I'm a language guy. I'm a prose guy. The economy of language in these six words, man, it tells you everything that you need to know. Right leg. It's a short story right there.

Right leg, comma, hospital. Left leg, comma, cemetery. Like, that is beautiful. That is a beautiful language right there. I just wish we had more cash phrases. If Francis is a gun who would knock a dude out and then be like, that uppercut sent you to hell or whatever, like something cool, you know, like that's very much not cool.

But like this is a cool version of that. Does he stand it over the body? Like, why can't we have this? It's a great question. There is a wonderful piece on, it's a great website, Sheen. It's called mhmap fighting.com. and it's written by a young man named Sean Al-Shati. I don't know if you are related or heard of him,

but it's about Mirko Krokop. It's Mirko Kroko Kroko kind of reflecting after the end of his career. He talks about it. And there's one of my favorite things, like when I was doing the research and found this thing. It's like he's talking about the origin of this catchphrase. And it's so it's so KroKopp how it happened. Because it's this matter-of-factily, it's like, yeah, so how does this happen?

I think I was talking to Boss Ruden and just kind of joking around and he's asking like, what am I going to hit him with? You know, which leg am I going to kick my opponent with? And I was like, I don't know. If he's lucky, it'll be my right one. He's like, why? Well, because if I kick him with the right one, he'll just go to the hospital. If I get him with the left one at Cemetery, I'm just like, dude, to matter-of-factedly say

that, it's just unreal stuff from him. I love it so much. It's one of the best things ever happened in the sport, Frank. A couple of other quotes I have just sonarable mentions. He, I don't know if you remember, Chale Sondon, like, got under his skin at one point in time, you know, when Chale was being Chale. And he, he goes on some sort of a morning show or whatever he's talking about it.

And so the quote maybe is a little bit, I've seen different versions of the quote because it's translated, but it's just a great quote. of Mirko talking about Chal Sunnan. He's like, yeah, I don't really want to say too much bad about him or whatever. I understand that people talk a lot in this sport and like that's what's going on, you know, whatever.

But then the quote is, you can tell by his face that the man is slow, that he is stupid, and his IQ is not higher than the size of the shoe he is wearing. And I'm just like, yeah, Mirko, that's a same thing. You can tell that he's dumb,

and his IQ's not bigger than his shoe size. The matter-of-fact way he speaks is just so good, right? It's just the best. Presenting you this information. This is the best. I have the Josh Barnett story. I won't go over that again.

And then I have a sadder quote, but one that feels, I just, I like quotes like this about fighters reflecting sort of an understanding. This is a quote from him after the JDS fight or gets knocked out. I have 20 years of training like a Spartan behind me. It is caught up with me. My body is broken down. I'm worn out. And it's just like, that's a bit of a bummer, but it's, the economy of words, as you so put it,

really drives across sort of exactly how the end of a career like his, like this happens. And so there was a good quote as I was going through stuff. What do you have here, Sheen? No, I mean, it's right leg hospital, left like cemetery. That is it. That's the sole thing I have because, again, it's the only thing you need. When you name the category after this, that's the winner. It's the only thing any of it.

us ever really needs. New category. So I'm thinking about redoing the categories as we move into 2024. We tried this one out last time. I liked it. It's a hot take categories. If you have a hot take about the career of Mirko Krokop, you know, load it up and fired out. I got one for you, Sheen. I don't know if you have one. I know this is where I thrive. But as I was going through his career, I'm not sure that I believe this all the way, but I kind of think that maybe I do. you, Mirko Krocop had the best pride career. Of all of the big pride stars, you're talking Van der Le Scylva, Fador, Nogara, Shogun, like the guys who we think of as pride, Mirko, obviously in that kind of holy four or five people,

that key group, obviously Fador maybe had the quote, unquote, best, the most accomplished, right? And, you know, Vandale had the most wins or whatever. He hasn't exactly won any of those, but, dude, it's so goddamn fun to watch his pride fights. Like, it is so unbelievably fun to watch his, like, his failures. Like, when he did lose, it was significant in a way that was spectacular. Like, his lost to Nog, one of the best fights of that year, the Kevin Randman's sensational, Fador, an unbelievable fight. And then his other fights are just such, the highlights are more spectacular than Fado

highlights are the totality of them because every one of them is him kicking some dude in the face and like that's just not how it worked for fador like great wins at an amazing career to rewatch and we did fado we talked all about it but i think from a pure entertainment viewing standpoint you got to go watch you get to watch one fighter's career in pride who is it going to be whose fights are you going to take to the desert island? I think I might take Mirko Crow Cop's pride career. Man, throw my, you throw me for a little bit of a loop here. I'm sitting here working through this as you're speaking.

My knee jerk is to say Fador, because obviously it's Fador because he was the guy he didn't lose, he was the one the whole time. But if we're free framing this as who is the most entertaining pride career, which that feels like what this is rather than best? Yeah, that's exactly what I'm saying. Okay, because best is different than entertainment. Best, you just have to take federal because he's never lost. So, like, obviously, it's any photo whole bunch and it's very accomplished.

But, like, if I'm just going, like, who is the most watchable pride fighter of all time? I think I'd have a better answer for you, though. What? I don't know. I mean, look, Shogun's great, but, dude, I'm like, Mirko has, like, 12 first-round knockouts. It's just sick. Shogun has just as many. you look at Shogun's entire run.

He didn't lose it at all, right, except for the broken arm, Mark Coleman thing. And every other fight is first round knockout, first round knockout, first round knockout, first round knockout, stomp, soccer kick, stomp, soccer kick. Like this man, it's a great, it's a great run. So I said it wasn't 100% sold. It's a half-baked hot take. I like it in the oven, but. I like it.

It really jumped out of me as I was going through it and I was like, I kind of want to bring the hot take because I want to discuss this because, man, When I was rewatching his career, it was so, it was easy because it was like, all right, cue up another one. I'm going to watch this video for four minutes and then the chaos is going to come. Cue up another one. We're just doing this. It's never like, here's going to be a 15-minute slug. It was not what happened.

It was awesome. This group is so damn fun, man. Do you have a hot take for us, Sheen? I don't. You kind of laid this category on me late, so I don't have more for you. And that's fine. We don't have to. I think we're going to bring this in moving forward, and I may restructure some of these.

I've got a couple of category ideas. We've just got to keep things fresh. You know, you don't want to get stale. It's not the idea. However, we are going to continue on. We're going to move to our next category. The Fador Sweeter of Absolute Victory Award. This is for the piece of memorabilia that you would want to have if you could own one thing from the fighter's career.

I got a couple. I think the obvious answer, right? Like there's the clear-cut choice, I think, is just a pair of the checkerboard shorts. I mean, some of the most iconic fight shorts in the history of the sport. Seems really, really obvious to pick that one. I have another one that mostly I just want to use this category as a thing as a way to talk about another aspect of crow cop. But first, let me throw it to you. I saw you nod along with checkerboard shorts.

Was that your choice? Or is that just on your list? No, I mean, that's the number one, right? The skin-tight, very short checkered board shorts. Like, that's iconic. It's when we could have fun in this sport with the attire. You get things like that. I mean, either top three fight short of all time, like most iconic fight shorts.

Hmm. Okay, that's tough. I'm trying to think. Because I think Chuck and Tito. If there's anybody I would pick. Chuck and Tito, to me, are on the top three because they were so contrasting, right? Flames, ice. Yeah.

Blue red. Like it was a real Sub-Zero Scorpion thing that they had going on and that to me I see I would put Chuck in the top three I would not have Tito

I would have Chuck BJ and Crow Cop would meet my top three makes there somewhere to me the BJ Black Boat shorts are just unbelievable to me To me I almost think Tito's

is more iconic because that dumb flame motif felt so of the time and felt so like representative of exactly what was going on at that point in time you know but those two

B.J. for sure, the blackboard belt shorts, and then Anderson with the yellow? Anderson's yellow shorts are up there. I mean, they're, but these are... But I think those four and then Crow Cop are in the five. That to me makes up the five.

If you wanted, I honestly think I might just put Crow Cop at one. They're just so iconic to me. So a great, great answer. Just for fun, I also put just a poster of Crow Cop doing the Van Dam splits

because it's such a good gimmick. It's such a good gimmick. It's like you know back in college when people had the Michael Jordan, Palm and the basketball wingspan thing, I wish that I was cool enough that instead of having that poster for my college dorm, I just had Crow Cop doing the splits.

That would be a much cooler poster of the same ilk. It would start more discussions. Certainly. People would think it was a little weird, but that'd be okay with it. Here's thing I really wanted to talk about, though, because I didn't know where else to put this. There is a whole aspect of Crocop that I could not figure out where to place it, and so I put it here. I would like a specific jacket that Crowe Cop was wearing.

It's a sort of blue bomber-ish-style jacket that he's wearing when one of the most iconic thing in 2000s, M. may happen. I'm speaking, of course, about when he scared Morrow Rinalo half to death backstage at a pride event doing the Pride Maro prank. If you don't know what this is, Mara Rinalo commentator for Pride is said to speak to Crow Cop. Krocop gets kind of surly with him and then it's like, hey, aren't you the dude who like said I couldn't beat this guy or whatever? Like while you were commenting, Mom was like, no, I didn't commentate that fight. Miriko's like, yeah, you did, fuck you. And then gets like very menacing tomorrow.

And Maro like sort of backs up and it's like he, Maro starts metaphorically shitting his pants that Mirko Krokop is about to kill him. And, but credit tomorrow, he holds his ground as like, I'm not going to apologize for something I didn't do. I did not work that fight. He has no reason to be angry at me. And at this point, Boss Rood and all are crowded around him. And they're like, no, just go apologize.

He's like, I'm not going to do it. And then Mirko comes up and is like, like, I'm just messing with you, man. And Maro's like, almost in tears of fear. Like, it is, it is a deeply mean thing viewed through a certain lens. And Mirko's like, ah, boss put me up to this. It would be really funny. And everybody is just laughing directly at Maro's expense.

It's an iconic moment of IMA in that period of time. It was all over the forums. If you just Google Mirko KroKopp prank, it's the first thing that comes up. I wanted to talk about that and the fact that Mirko Kroko, dude, he's funny as hell he has a number of good pranks that sort of happened over the course of career.

This is the most memorable one, but I kind of wanted to talk about that aspect of his personality as well because I think it's important. Low-key hilarious. Also, like, kind of a good actor. He's really convincing. Dude, Morrow was intimidated. Can you imagine being in that spot?

No, I can't. I'm apologizing profusely for something that I didn't do. That's right. Credit tomorrow. You didn't. But then they asked me, dude, are you scared?

I was scared. It's Mirko Krokov. It's unreal. So I wanted to talk about that. I also just wanted to shout, I went down a rabbit hole of Mirko pranks once I got into this. So it's like, I wanted to rewatch this prank.

It's a weird world out there, man. So one, you've got this event. This is obviously the most notable one. There's also another one you can find. There's a lot of video out there of Mirko dumping ice water on Satoshi Ishi while Ishi is showering.

And it's like, this is much more of him being like a mischievous little kid who's got this like big bowl of ice water and Ishi's in the gym showers. And he's like, and he runs and he gets up and he climbs up to the top of like stands on this toilet and then throws the ice water over the shower and you just hear Ishi scream. He's just like a kid.

Like a mysterious little kid. It's really, really adorable and funny. Two more that are very different but similar. One is, there's video of it. It's insane that this happened. The best I could piece together by kind of working this out, this is a prank he sort of orchestrated while doing his work with the special forces because obviously he's a police officer.

Like that's where Crow Cop comes from. he's doing a special forces training seminar thing with some dudes and it is fully videoed and there's you can go find it out there a spat happens during the training whatever like some dude slaps a guy blah blah blah the end result is the dude leaves the room okay situation resolved the dude comes back with an AK 47 and start shooting it and everyone like loses their mind and then oh jkk it's actually actually not a real AK-47 and it was just like a prank to get one of the dudes who was there.

It's insane. From your face, you did have not seen this? I had not seen this either until I kind of like fell down this rabbit hole. I'm like, what is going on and who jokes with an AK-47? But it's a thing that happened. So that's crazy. You know, Croatia. It's a different world than maybe you and I live in, Gene.

Shit gets real and creoleish. Oh, my God. And I've never seen that. That's insane. It's, look it up, it's wild. And this is the one that I had never, I don't even remember happening, but is maybe the funniest worst prank I've ever heard of.

And it's Fabrice Overdune famously trained, like was Crocops BGGA coach for a long time, like back in Pride Days and stuff. They trained together a bunch. And there is the story that you can find or counted in the forums and elsewhere. of Crocop had Verduem came to Croatia to train with Crocop. And because Crocop is a member of the police, he had his buddies pull

Verdum over once Verdom. He knows Verduem's landing. He's going to drive to his house. Pull him over. They asked for his paperwork. Verdum is like, yeah. And then they're like, this is no good. What are you doing here?

And then they arrest Fabricio Verdom. And Verdoom's like, what are you talking about? Like, I'm here to see Mirko Croco. Never heard him. Don't know. They arrest him, put him in the back of his car, and then drive him to Crowe Cop's house, and then get him out,

and then he's in handcuffs, and then Crowe Cop opens the door, and Verdub figures out what's going on, and it's just like, dude, that's a crazy thing, but it's kind of hilarious. He's just like, yeah, Verduan seemed like he was a little bit scared

and didn't know his going. I was like, well, no, shit. He just got arrested by cops in the country he doesn't live in or speak the language. Oh, my God, man. The point of this all is the Mirro Crocop, a bit of a joker. And as you kind of dig into it more, you find out more things about this. And I didn't have anywhere else to put this stuff.

So I chose to put it in this particular category. Sheen, I hope you've learned more about Mirro Crocop and respect him more. Because I think the Redoom thing is kind of mean, but definitely funny. Who knew? Who knew this man was such a jokester? I love it. He's like the, he would fit well with the jackass crew, it feels like. Oh, it would be perfect.

It's just like the amount of jokes you can pull off when you're a cop and you're just, ah, just arrest my buddy. It'll be so fun. It's just so ridiculous to do. It's just, this man was a member of parliament. And it's just doing shit like that. I just got to say,

I'm deeply respecting how far people are willing to take it in Croatia, it seems like. We're talking about AKs. We're talking about fake arrests. Like, these are more than just normal pranks. And I'm here for it. The AK1 is absolutely. insane. And I was like, this feels like it's a bridge too far. But, you know, however it goes. Our next category, the Habib Tony Award for a fight that you wanted, but never ended up making,

you know, never got to happen, never got made. This was, I think there's a clear answer here. And I think it's the number one answer. It's Randy Couture, right? Is that, is that your number one answer, Sheen, I guess? Let's start there. That was my answer because ultimately, I think Crow Cop fought everyone who he should have fought. And it's very rare we get... I largely agree. It's very rare we get people like that, but that was the one fight that we just didn't get,

that we should have gotten. Because Grady Gattor is the UFC champion at that point, especially when Crowe Cop comes over. That should have happened. That was a fight that was talked about in the forums for a long time. It was very dumb that we didn't get it. That would have been a meaningful fight

for the history of the sport. I think... So I ultimately chose it because I think it's the fight that is... I'm the most angry. we didn't get. Because, like, Havib Tony is the namesake of this award. They tried. They tried to make this fight happen and the gods will did not to. It is unfortunate. I am, I wish it had, but, you know, you book it four or five times. And when you book it four times it fails and the fifth time, a global pandemic intervenes, at some point you might just say the gods don't

want this thing to occur. With Randy, they never tried. They never tried. He fought Eddie Sanchez when he came to the UFC, which I remember thinking was dumb at the time, but like, fine. You know, it's his first fight in a cage. You want to let him have that experience, like he wants that experience, whatever. He beats Eddie Sanchez.

Why is there a title eliminator with Gabriel Gonzaga? It would never happen today. There is no reason for it to do that. You just, you have the fight. Everyone wants the fight. Just make the fight happen. And I think part of it was, honestly at the time, and I can't speak, say whether this is true or not. At the time, it honestly felt like Dana White and the Furtitas were still trying to flex a little bit of muscle over the pride acquisitions.

That's why, you know, we have Shogun coming. He doesn't get the fight for a title. He has to fight for us. So it doesn't go very well. It's like, yeah, you're going to have to earn your strike. here instead of just been like, dude, everyone knows Crow Cop's one of the best dudes in the world. It's the fight we want to make it happen. I'm also very upset because I can't be sure feel like Crow Cop wins that fight. Like I always felt that Crow Cop had a very good chance to knock

out old Randy and then think about how the paradigm of his career shifts with that win. So, yeah, ultimately won mine, but one, I also noted Alistair Overeem just because they met a dream. There's no contest after a groin shot. And that feels like a fight that honestly should have happened as well, but kind of never, we didn't get a satisfactory one. Really weird. It's really weird that it never really did. They were in the same place as multiple times.

Forever. Yeah. That feels like the fight should have happened. They did fight, but it was that weird one. And then this one, I didn't really remember being possible, but buddy, let me tell you. I alluded to this earlier. That rise in Grand Prix. there was a very, very realistic world where that semi-final matchup,

instead of Mirko Kroko taking on Baruto Keito, he's fighting Yuri Prajka. And I got to say, sign me the fuck out for that. You know what I'm saying? Like Mirko Krokoop on all the extra vitamins against full wild man, Yerai Pajka, that is something that I would have enjoyed an immense amount at that time. So those are my three. Did you have any other ones beyond the Randy fight?

Well, first of all, I've never thought of the idea of Yuri versus Crow Cop until this conversation. And now I'm deeply sorry. It's very good, right? I'm deeply sorry that we didn't see that because that would have just been. That's the thing is I didn't think of it either until I went looking into this rising thing. And I was like, dude, that was really possible to happen. And man, we missed out. So, yeah, that was then I started thinking about.

I was like, that could have been pretty fun. That could have been pretty fun. Did you have any alternates here outside of the Randy first ballot? No, I mean, ultimately for me, it is the Randy one. And I don't want to step on our next category, but I kind of will right here, because obviously that's the T.J. Grant alternate universe award, and you sort of alluded to it. The UFC fucked this up. The UFC...

Ficked it up so hard. Maybe not for their sake, because I think for them, they didn't care about the legacy of Crowcop and they didn't care about making that fight. Really, they cared about proving that the UFC guys. were superior to the pride guys because that was very much a conversation point for so long in their history and always it was just all like oh well the prize guys will smash the UFC guys particularly a heavyweight yeah and the and light heavyweight where you get shogun coming over and losing a forest and it's like a signature guy beating a signature guy that type of thing but i agree with you i think if

you make like i understand the first fight right the edie sanchise won same with Anderson silver Anderson silver coming in here fighting chris leban you got to let people know who this person is maybe they get him a highlight, they can use the footage. But once you've told the story once, and it's, hey, this is this guy, this terrifying, fearsome guy who's one of the best in the world, you're introduced to him. Hey, here you go, you knocked this guy out. Once you've told that story, once you don't need to tell it a second time before you give the minute.

Like, what was going on in the heavyweight division at that point that they couldn't just let Crowcott fight for the belt? Are you kidding me? And so it's all such like a self-inflicted wound because I agree. I think if he fights for any tour, that's an incredible style matchup for Croweop. Crow Crop's been beaten dudes like Randy for most of his career. I think he washes old Randy Gattour. And then we have Crow Crop, UFC heavyweight champion on the resume.

And it's just such a missed opportunity. It is such a devastatingly missed opportunity because this is, there's just no reason to do it. Like it just didn't make any sense. Like Randy had just fought Tim Sylvia. And like the month before they do the Gonzaga fight. It's like, okay, instead you could just have like Crow Cop, it'd already come, he'd already been the thing, just have him sitting there next at UFC 68 to fight Tim Sylvia.

It's going to be here's the next dude up. Pride versus the UFC. We get to do it. He's the Pride Openweight champion. And instead, like, it doesn't happen. And for nothing. So I pulled this up, Cotour Gonzaga, which is a fight we ultimately end up getting, of course. sells 500,000 pay-per-views.

It's a good, I mean, that's a good number, but that's kind of the number they were just generally doing at that point in time. You cannot tell me that Couture Crow Cop at that point doesn't. So way more than that, because the movement behind Crow Cop, it was just such an unnecessary miss. This is also my T.J. Grant. I normally try to avoid this, but, like, kind of doing the overlap there, but it's just like, what if we didn't do stupid, useless tune-up fights and just had the guy fight?

Where would we be? His career would obviously be looked at differently, be UFC heavyweight champion. You know, he probably loses the belt pretty soon because he does not have a terrific run in the UFC. Well, hold on. So real quick, right? Because there's another element to this that we haven't mentioned. And we haven't mentioned this man's name really throughout this podcast. But Gonzaga beats Crowcott, fights Randy for the title.

loses. Who's Randy Couture's next title defense? It's Brock Lesnar. It's Brock Lesnar. If Mirko Kroko beats Randy, he is then the champion, he is the one who meets Brock Lesnar for this final boss battle. And can you imagine, can you imagine the paper views that that would have sold? If it's Randy Couture, I'm sorry, if it's Brock Lesnar coming in against Mirko freaking Crowcop, who has not lost in this alternate scenario, as the U.S. heavyweight champion, like that is an iconic fight. That is then instantly

an iconic pay-per-view. Does he fight, Brock? I'm trying to think, because also Randy did take that extended time off where he's fighting with the UFC trying to get the Fador fight. Obviously, Crocob does... It was about a year, though. There was only really a year between Gonzaga and Lesnar.

Like, I think that maybe Crocob has to fight somebody else as its first title defense, but ultimately the U.S. Heavyweight Division wasn't full of killers at that point. I think he probably wins that fight, and then he is the guy fighting Barack. Yeah. I mean, yeah, maybe he fights, honestly, the most likely outcome, I guess,

because at that point in time, what sort of ends up happening is that's when Tim Sylvia just lost to Randy, but then after, like, that's when we get Nogera fights Tim Sylvia for the interim heavyweight championship. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah, he fights for the interim, and that's, that's, and that's. of how that going. So, like, if he gets either fight Nogara or Tim Sylvia, like, one of those two dudes, pretty big fight. Like, Tim Sylvia, it's a fight that I don't care that didn't happen, but is another one of those that, like, they were pillars of that time period. So you get it.

Maybe he gets his opportunity at revenge against Nogara. Then he fights Brock. Yeah. Like, it's just a way better world if they don't fuck around and make him fight Gabriel Gonzaga for whatever. God knows what reason they did that. So, tough scenes. I will also shout out briefly at the Habib Tony thing. We just never got the rematch with Fador. I think it's fine that we didn't, but there were several kind of opportunities.

There was the opportunity in Bellator at the end of their careers. There were just windows where it could have happened and sort of never came to fruition. And I don't think it was necessary, but I would have obviously loved to watch them fight again because their first one was significant. and substantial. It would have been fun, but I also don't hate that it didn't happen.

Because it does feel like it makes the actual fight that much more special, just a little bit of like this was genuinely a once in a lifetime, once in a generation, once of the era type of moment. And if you missed it, you missed it. And it's gone. You missed it. Yeah. It's why it's not how on the list, but I didn't want to shout it out.

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There. The last one. Enjoy a Coca-Cola for a pause that refreshes. We're coming up, where we're closing down, just a few categories left, the Dan Henderson H-bomb award, this is for, if you could take one thing that the fighter does, one skill set, one part of their career and add it to your own or create a fighter, what would it be? Come on.

Come on. Come on. On my sheet, I literally have written. Come on. It's, I'll tell you. There was a very, when I was kind of structuring these categories, I almost did left leg cemetery here instead of doing it as a quote thing, just because is there a more iconic weapon in the history of mixed martial arts than Mirko Krokop's left leg?

I'm not sure there is. I mean, not sure there is. So H-Bomb, and a couple others are probably like the bound rush. Like they're there, they're with it. I don't know if anything's more iconic. They are all right there with, like, they're all in that God. tier of it. So easy choice. I will also just, as I went and we watched, a shout out to other parts of his game that I don't think get remembered in the same way. His left straight and his

uppercut, particularly the rear hand uppercut, oh, buddy, those things are mean. Like he is, and we talked about a lot, he was so mean in the ring and those things are that they'll kill you just as viciously as that left. Ted K. Cool, man. They are nasty, nasty business. I think also his ability to translate intensity with silence is real, like, real, real underrated. It goes back to the stare down with Vandalay. I'm just like, dude is unflappable in a way that is so terrifying to just watch. But it's outwardly unfla. Like, it's not that sort of stoic, I don't give a fuck that Fador has for everything. It is like a.

I give so many fucks. It's a quiet intensity. Yeah, it is quiet intensity there for sure. The Brad I'm Fun with Stats Award, named after Brad Ims, the Hillbilly Hartthrop, heavyweight who once famously won back-to-back fights by Cogopata. Super weird, and that's what this is.

What are weird stats or fun things you can do? I will, one, just to shout back out to the reason we're doing it, he fought 10 times on December 31st and 52 career fights. I didn't look around. Pretty sure that's the record. I strongly doubt anyone has fought more consistently on the same date than this man has. But the other ones I had, I didn't spend too much time on this category, honestly, because I just didn't care enough this time around.

Fought eight times in 2004, which is just an insane number of times to do fist fighting. And then the thing I didn't realize, but it's right there on Wikipedia, he holds the Zufa record for most first round finishes, most most finishes by kicks, and most head kick knockouts, which is incorporating WEC, UFC, pride, the whole ZUFA organization at the time.

I straight up did not realize that, like, if you factor all of that in, he still is there. Because so many of those records have fallen as more fighters have been around and fighting forever and ever under the same sort of UFC banner. But Crow cop, he knocked out like,

12 dudes in the first round. It's a good thing. It's a good thing. It is very much a good thing. Yeah, I have two for these, two for this category, I should say. One is an offshoot of one we've already mentioned a couple times, which was the activity level. February 2004 to February 2005 fights nine times. And every single opponent has a Wikipedia page.

Every single one. Dude, I think the only person that doesn't have a Wikipedia page, is Ibrahim Maccometta. It's just like it's insane. He fought like real people even if some of them weren't like real

real, like they were still like humans who could fist fight. I mean even to that degree, 52 MMA fights and 50 Wikipedia pages for opponents is pretty. That's a lot. That's a lot. That's not bad.

That is. I've been doing this a while now, boys and girls. That is not something that happens. There are very few fighters with something like we made note of it when it's like, oh, everyone BJ fought has a Wikipedia page or whatever. It's like, oh, Brock Lesnar was, I think, our first person who everyone they had fought had

a Wikipedia page. He also fought 12 times not 52 of them. And then my other one on this was almost like unrelated but semi-related. The man was working as a actual working politician in Croatian parliament from 2003 to 2008, which was the majority of his prime. the peak of his years. He was just like an active politician in Croatia during all of this.

It's very odd. He's, he's had such a singular kind of career in that way. Like, Manny Pachiao-esque and like, yeah, I'm, I'm a politician,

but I also fistfight people. Okay. That's my day job. Many Pagio is doing like, boxing, high-level boxing matches, which is in like a very respected sport. Crow cops out here in like some,

OG bloodsport, cowboy day era, Yakuza era. His friends arrested. Having ridiculous Dos Keras Jr. type of fights. When you put it like that, this is a sitting member of Croatian parliament who is having indirect but almost direct like monthly interactions with the Yakuza. That's pretty funny. You think about it like that. It's just an incredible time.

What a time. It's getting paid by the Yakuza. Now, not for his political parts, one would assume, though I guess we can't say that with absolute certainty, but it's like frequently receiving big bags of money from Yakuza affiliates, everybody. And all of that ranks, wouldn't even rank on like a top 10 of weird shit going on in pride during that time. Like, just such an amazing time that will never ever be replicated.

Never have it back. Sean Farris Awards, our next category. This is for the actor who should play. Mirko Krokop if they made a movie about his life. Fun fact, they didn't make a documentary about him. This was way back in the day. I watched it with subtitles. It's not that interesting.

It's just not, like, it's the same sort of thing, but it's also made in like 2004 and it's cranny and not all that good. I really, really struggled here, Shaheen, really struggled to find someone that I think could play him. I have two answers, and mostly I would like to blend the two of them together because I don't feel like either of them is perfect. First one is Jamie Dornan, who I think sort of has enough of the facial features to kind of maybe make that work.

But I wasn't in love with it. And then I think I settled on the answer that if I had to pick, again, I don't feel great about it. But Murrow is such a physically imposing figure. I think you need that physicality to really get him across. And this man can play at all. He's not Italian, but they're not Italian. They made him Enzo Ferrari and it worked out.

Give me Adam Driver to be Mirko Crow Cop. He is a large and physically imposing person and a damn fine actor. And so I think we can make it work even if it's not ideal. You kind of broke my brain with that. I don't know how to parse this. I struggled so hard. There was nobody that really jumped out perfectly for me. And I just watched Ferrari, quite a good movie.

I recommend. like, yeah, he, because he has, every time Adam driver is on screen in Ferrari, you're like, he's awkwardly large for all the people around. He's kind of got the wide body thing, right? Like the barrel chest. He's very wide. He's barrel chested. He's six, three or whatever. And like, you know, he is built. He is a physically built person. We need to put a little more on him to get him up to Crow Cop. But, um, you know, some prosthetics. And the man's a damn fine actor. So this is the best I can come up with. Hmm. I'm not sold, but I'm willing to work with you on that one. I think you could convince me. Get some good prosthetics. Okay. Yeah, the prosthetics are

going to be necessary, but he played Inzo Ferrari and he did a pretty damn good job. I feel like he can pull off Mirko Crocob. Is that movie worth watching? It's quite good. Okay. I'm going to check that out. Um, it's not Michael Mann's like best film or whatever, but it's quite good. And well, yeah, it's quite good. I mean, if I can do what Michael Mann pulls off when I'm 80, I'll feel incredibly accomplished. And also there's a, I won't say it's a twist at the ending, but there's a thing that happens at the ending, which is the most surprised I've been in a movie since like Zombie Land.

Okay. If you're still podcasting at 80 and you're still pulling out damn episodes of Colby Covington at 83 because you've run out of subjects, I will be very impressed with you. I'll be really impressed if I'm podcasting at 80 to even a tenth of the ability, Michael Mann's putting off film. So, hell yeah.

What did you have here, Sheen? So this is never my category. I never really have very many good things for this. I didn't really, you're right. Crow Cop is so singular. I didn't really have, I couldn't come up with anybody. I couldn't come up with anybody I liked. So I'm willing to work with the Adam Driver one.

Hey, Jamie Dornan, I don't really see it. I'm staring at this quite a bit. I don't really see where you get to it. But Adam Driver, I think you'll work with. Well, this next one's going to be easy to work with. It's the Cole Conrad career change. award for what would this fighter do if they weren't in the May fighter? And, you know, it's in the name, Shaheen.

The name is Mirko Filipovich, but nobody calls him that. They call him Crow Cop. Arguably the stupidest good nickname in the history of the sport. He's a Croatian cop, and it somehow works. It's so catchy. It's so good. It's so good for such a silly name to have been like, hey, we're not, this isn't, like, you are just crow cop you are not me like you're just mirro crocop now is your name it's such silly name he would

just be a cop if he was in a may fighter i know this because that's that's what he was even while he was an in a mate fighter so police officer slash member of parliament is the answer for this category again i've said this so many different times over the course of doing all these shows but just like such a different time where like you look at his wikipedia entry it's mirko crocop it's not mirko Philip, it's Crow Cop, it's Shogun Hooh, it's Rampage Jackson, it's all these dudes were their nickname. If you look

in our database on MMA fighting, like a fighter-tag database, he is tagged as Mirko Kro-Cop. It's just, he's synonymous with it. We don't have this anymore. Yeah, it's just, I'm trying to think like, is there anybody? Like Blood Diamond,

I guess, but like, come on. Blood Diamond is, I guess, it. But also, he's not very good. Yeah, that's sort of like, We don't have high-level guys who are just, they're actually synonymous with nicknames rather than the real name. Because it's also not like Filipovich is the most difficult name. Like people took to you on a champion because it's really hard to spell YNJ check, right?

But it's not like, we can all say Filipovic. It's not that difficult of a thing to get across. It's like, nah, Kroko is just better. But like Yuen J-Jech's wiki entry is still Yen-J-Chek, you know? Like these shoes still be referred to as Yen J-J-check on these broadcasts. maybe the Korean zombie is the only other one who's like a modern day guy. But he's not really a modern day guy either.

It's like this next generation, the bow nickel generation, all these guys coming in. Who's the nickname guy? Who's the good nickname guy? Who's synonymous with his nickname? No one. We got nothing. Really?

I mean, we really don't have even a lot of good nicknames anymore. There's a dearth of creativity right now in MMA. as a whole. And this is one of the examples. Our final category of the evening, the, look at me now! Leon Edwards Award for the best moment of their career. The Apex Mountain, where it is the peak of the career.

Super easy for me as well. Super easy. I'm assuming that when I say super easy, this means we'll both, in September 10th, 2006, it is the evening he won the Pride, Open Wake, Grand Prix. It's the biggest accomplishment of his career after the fact. I mean, Mirro is

quoted as saying that he had seriously considered retiring if he did not win this. I think the only blemish you can put it all upon this event in total. I mean, one of the best Grand Prix ever is that this event was it originally set up to have Mirko rematch Fador during it and then injuries kind intervened and that's where we go. But this is the peak of his power is physically, athletically, a star power. Everything comes together in a brilliant night. That's why he is the 2006 fighter of the year. If he had retired after this, I'm glad he did it because of that second great leg of his career that we talked about. But this is the easy peak for me. No, it's the zenith. This is the apex. This is everything. It was never better than it was

on that night. And almost immediately it was worse, right? Because then he goes straight to the UFC and the UFC stuff starts happening. And it's just this was this was the apex. It was one of the most memorable nights in the history of the sport. Dude, think about that.

Exactly what you just said. He goes from beating, you know, Vandali Silva, Josh Burnett, in the same night to win this incredible, wonderful accomplishment to fighting Eddie Sanchez in Las Vegas. Only like five months later. Like it was,

It was a pretty quick turnaround. Whatever you go from this thing to being the co-main event to Anderson Silver, Travis Luter, and you're fighting Eddie Sanchez. What a fall off, man. That is such a goddamn bummer. Oh. And that's it, ladies gentlemen, it brings us to the end of our show, which is the final, it's not really a category.

It's just close and shop. This is where we have spent almost two hours. talking about the esteemed Mirko Kroko. We've talked about a lot. But in case we, you know, there's anything else we want to say. Now's the time to do it. So, Shaheen, the floor is yours. What are your final thoughts on Mirko Kroko? I don't have much to add outside of what we've already said, but I do wonder, and I wonder a lot often with these type of figures when we do these shows. What do you think the fan base of MMA today thinks of Mirko, knows of Mirko, how they regard him?

I imagine that he is respected and not revered at large. I think there's enough exposure to his high moments that real fans, not just like super casual, but fans who are like a little more deeply invested, the kind of fans who are either listening to this show or this door. Yeah, like COVID generation fans who came on during that or even Connor generation. I think they probably know enough about him to respect that he did some cool things. but that they largely think that he was overrated and maybe not that good because of sort of how that UFSI run went. And there is such a, as much as I hate it and think that it is a very idiotic way to approach things, I fundamentally disagree with it.

There is such an undercurrent in the MMA fan base against performance-enhancing drugs and a dismissal of those who may or may not have used them. because I think actually Mirko never was officially caught taking them. Well, he popped for HGH to heal his injury late in the UFC stuff. He did, but I didn't, I think he admitted to that, like, to doing that, but then also didn't he not fail that test when it came back on the second sample? It was a weird setup. Yeah, I might have been like that. I can't remember off.

Yeah. My recollection is that, like, he just admitted to doing it, but that he actually didn't, he got a sample flagged, but then actually didn't fail when the, they did like the deeper dive, but he just admitted it. It was like, oh, yeah, no, I just did that. So, but, you know, like, we don't know that he took drugs during his pride run, probably did. I think there's just such a dismissal from a vocal section of the fan base is like that that doesn't

count. And so I disagree with that. But I think that a lot of people will hold that sort of part of his career against him for that. I think you're right. I think a lot of what you just said, the assessment feels on point. in particular because this fandom goes through faces, right? Like we talk about it all this time, all the time, but there's the Connor generation,

then there's the COVID generation. Like, it's cycles. It's five-year cycles of just people falling in and falling out of this sport. It bums me out to a certain degree just because I wish there was somewhere. I wish there was a physical place that people could go, whether it's in Las Vegas, whether it's in New York, whether it's in the middle of Nebraska, nowhere. Yeah, just somewhere. Well, somewhere in America that.

people could go to have a tangible Hall of Fame to walk through and see these type of memories, see the iconic moments from this era, him versus Fador, everything that we've talked about over the past two hours. I wish there was some way for newer people to be indoctrinated in it outside of just listening to shows like this. And maybe one night being bored and be like, oh, everyone talks about this crow cop guy. Let me go see what he's about on FightPass or YouTube. It's a real disservice to MMA that doesn't exist because he deserves, I think Crow Cop deserves better, Shogun deserves better, like all these guys of this era that never really made the mark in the Western world that we had hoped, but who still have such an indelible legacy and such an indelible impact on what created MMA and what MMA was at, you know, the peak of these years, these golden years. I just wish there was somewhere like that. because it feels like Crowe Cop is one of those guys that will be forgotten to a certain degree.

I don't know that he'll ever be a UFC Hall of Famer or anything like that. He will not. And so it's just like, what does that mean? If Crow Cop isn't a Hall of Famer, who is actually a Hall of Famer? Your sport's just dumb if a person like that isn't remembered in that way, right? I think that's a really depressing view that I hadn't considered. But like, yeah, because he's not going to be. The UFC's not going to deduct him because they don't, nothing is.

his UFC run was there. And while we sort of talk about that with Fador and kind of understand and accept it, Fadour is such an outlier that it's kind of okay. With KroKopp, it feels less okay. Because people know Fadour. Like even now, people still know Fader, like newer fans, because just he's been around long enough.

And he's a one word name, Fador, and it's just, I don't know, he reached a level where it was just so widely, ubiquitously known. And I don't know that KroKopp reached that level. I don't, I think you're right. Also, it's just like Fador is because there's not like the, you know, I'm trying to think of, trying to think of the comparison. I mean, Fador's exclusion from the UFC Hall of Fame makes sense because he didn't find the UFC ever.

But also, like, it's part of him. So it becomes like, it's like, oh, Barry Bonds isn't in the baseball Hall of Fame. But we all kind of know that. Like, that's part of it. P. Rose isn't in there. We're all that's with Crow Cop. It doesn't feel like he's elevated to that realm of it's notable that he is not in there. It's just sort of sad that he is not in there.

But that's a bummer because my sort of lasting impression as I did this was, man, Crowe Cop's career was so much more fun than I remembered it. Absolutely. And I remembered it being really fun. But I love doing this show. I say it every time because I get to kind of reconsider these careers in the aftermath. And I love Crow Cop during that period of time. and he hasn't fought for a while, but now I get to go back and I get to relive the days that I loved and they are as fun as I did.

And then I get to remember that, yeah, as UFC run was disappointing, but the whole second act, third act of his career was really, really fun. And no, he wasn't the best fighter in the world at that point in time, winning the rise in Grand Prix. But I don't need you to be the best fighter in the world. Like, that's not important. What was important is he was having fun. we were having fun sort of going on that journey and getting in well his retirement is not uplifting in the way that it happened because he suffered a stroke et cetera to look back on him be like hey he retired on a 10 fight win streak that's fucking impossible in the m m m a this shit doesn't

happen crazy she never happens like we spent much of last year talking about man we've had a couple of unbelievable retirements amanda nunez and robbie luller are immediately like two of the five best retirements in newmate history new as retires as a champion that doesn't happen every day so that's obviously great robbie luller won one fight like and we all thought he was going to lose it and it was awesome and so it's not like the best retirement that's ever happened in the sport but like prior to that he'd been kind of losing in these tough fights and it's been that's not the end we got for mirko and it's so satisfying in a way that is different from kind of a lot of other things. And so even if his career, you know, he never was an undisputed champion in

MMA. Who gives a shit? He was awesome. He gave us a million highlights. And like I said, kind of in the hot take, if you're just trying to kill an hour, you got nothing to do when you want to watch some people fight and you've never watched me or Crow Copper, you got to know him in passing. Dude, fire up fight pass and just click on any of them. Not any of the EOC fights because those don't matter. But click. It's like search Mirko and fire up any pride fight. And I guarantee you you're going to have a good time. And that's awesome. Like that was, I was so happy doing this. The fun I had with the K1 dives, with all of it. And the fact that it ended in a way that wasn't irrepressibly sad. Like, it was sad in the moment in the same way that Habib's retirement is sad because of how it happened.

but the fact that he got out of it largely with his health and his faculty is intact and didn't get forced out of it because the sport could no longer accept him. It was tremendous. And I had a really, really good time. And Mirko Krokop, to you, I say, thank you.

And damn, you were good. And that's it, ladies and gentlemen, another episode is in the books. The final episode of 2023. If I were a better podcaster, I would have all of the episodes that we did so I could know how we covered, but I don't have that up. What I do have for you is this.

Our next gentleman. Sheen, it's going to be fun. You're going to be along for the ride on this one. It's Kimbo Slice, baby. Oh, let's go. Kimbo Slices are next. Damn, they were good. We're kicking off 2024 in style.

We may make a few changes, may add some categories, may remove some categories, I just want to keep things a little fresh. But we're going to be talking about Kimbo's Lice and one of the five greatest fights in the main history. Talking, of course, about Kimbo. Dot out 5,000. But that comes in a couple of weeks until then. Happy New Year, everybody. I look forward to y'all sticking with us through all 2024.

Now, Shadi, thank you for coming on this Mirko KuroKop journey. And until next time, love you.