The sound of millions getting off the Mirko bandwagon

September 9, 2007 – 1:27 am by fightlinker

What the fuck is wrong with some people? First off you boo the hell out of fighters for being tentative or careful, but if they lose once or twice you dismiss them as done and over. Did you ever take a few damn seconds to think that maybe if a loss wasn’t considered such a cataclysmic event then maybe fighters would be more inclined to take risks and push the pace?

In my opinion this is the main difference between PRIDE and the UFC … in PRIDE, they don’t give a damn if you win or lose, it’s how entertaining the fight was. If you go down swinging, then you’ve got a lot of respect. But in the UFC, one or two wrong moves and you’re done. It’s not all that surprising to me that Crocop cracked under the pressure. That’s pretty much the story of his career … he just can’t seem to win the big ones. And considering all the pressure he was under to perform, this was definitely a ‘big one’.

In the past few hours I’ve read some pretty dumb shit from some pretty dumb people. And while I’m not going to defend Crocop’s performance tonight, I am going to defend his standing as one of the world’s top fighters. Talking about a top guy’s career being over after two losses is simply retarded. I wonder if they’ll do the same to Chuck Liddell if he loses to Keith Jardine. They certainly did it to Randy Couture over and over, and half the internet still brings up Couture’s slumps when trying to justify their position on ‘why Randy will lose this time’.

No one – especially not a hack like Kevin Iole – has the right to call Mirko Crocop washed up. No one has the right to say his career may be over. Those words are simply factually incorrect. Maybe three years down the road after a loss to Frank Mir pushes him out of the UFC and he’s fighting Tank Abbott on an Indian reservation. But now? Get a fucking grip, people.

Just like with Georges St Pierre, this will be the one time I’m going to bring this up. People on the internet talk and talk like what they’re saying actually matters … I may be a dick and I may talk shit but at least I don’t pretend like my blog channels through into reality. So I’ll sit back and watch more fights … and in 9 months we’ll see how Crocop is doing. I’ll make sure to remind everyone what they were saying after this fight just to show them how dumb they were.