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wandshogun09

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Ive never actually seen the fight, id see clips of it though in the old highlight videos back in the day.

Back before youtube and torrenting MMA highlight videos were great, id spend hours watching them.

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It’s a decent fight but that Twitter clip makes it look better than it actually was. The weird hybrid rules prevents it from becoming a real classic. Ninja Rua vs Mario Sperry on the same card was better.

Still worth a watch if you’re ever stuck for something to watch though. You can see Mirko’s sprawl wasn’t quite there yet but he handles himself fairly well in some of the clinches. Crazy that a year or so later he was knocking out Igor and giving Big Nog hell. Cro Cop really doesn’t get enough credit for how smoothly he crossed over from K-1. 

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50 minutes ago, wandshogun09 said:

Cro Cop really doesn’t get enough credit for how smoothly he crossed over from K-1.

Indeed, Cro Cop's striking style was tailor-made for MMA and the 4-sided ring. Other K1 aces of that era, and even a few who were more successful in kickboxing than Mirko, would not have been able to make the same smooth transition into MMA. Their striking styles would not have translated as well to the demands of MMA fighting. 

The same applies in reverse for some of the best strikers in MMA. Their striking may look like hot shit in the UFC or Bellator, but that doesn't mean they could make a successful transition into high-level kickboxing. 

Yes, Cro Cop couldn't fight in the cage and was never the outright best in the world in either discipline. Yet it is still commendable that he competed at the highest level in both sports, and had a lot of success along the way. 

Edited by jimufctna24
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Yeah you look at the other top Kickboxers who crossed over from that era and they didn’t do nearly as well in MMA as Cro Cop did. Peter Aerts went 1-2. Jerome Le Banner went 4-3. Even big Semmy Schilt, he did a bit better and he stuck at it longer than a lot of them but he finished up losing nearly as many as he won and got bashed when he stepped in with top flight Heavyweights like Fedor, Barnett, Sergei etc. There’s Overeem but he started in MMA then went into K-1 later. I’d say it’s probably harder to do it the way Mirko did because there was so much to learn and adjust to with the wrestling and BJJ. And he was straight into Pride where they didn’t care about gradually building you up, you were straight in with the sharks. Plus the two best Heavies on the planet at the time were there in Fedor and Nogueira.

Cro Cop made his MMA debut in 2001 and in his first 10 fights he faced Fujita twice, Wandy, Sakuraba, Herring, Igor and Nogueira. Yet the revisionist McGregor/Rousey era fanboys will tell you Pride fed their stars nothing but cans. 

Edited by wandshogun09
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Crocop was easily the most successful crossover from K-1 at that time, Mark Hunt 2nd? I just love that nearly all of them tried and vice versa, usually to disastrous results. 

Semmy Schilt did the opposite, he was an MMA fighter first, then went to dominate K-1. I never feel Schilt gets the credit he deserves in combat sports. Guy crossed over and won the K-1 Grand Prix 4 times 😲

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Schilt fought pretty much everyone as well, from a few different eras, in K-1. He fought Peter Aerts 5 times, losing the series 2-3. I’ve only seen 2 of their fights but both were very close decisions so maybe there’s an argument for Schilt. He beat Le Banner 4-0 in their series. Beat Ernesto Hoost 2-0-1. Beat Remy Bonjasky 3 times. Beat Ray Sefo twice. Beat Michael McDonald, Peter Graham, Paul Slowinski, Glaube Feitosa. All good fighters in their day. And even at the end of his career he had wins over the newer wave of Heavies like Rico Verhoeven, Badr Hari, Gokhan Saki and Daniel Ghita.

Schilt might have the best record in Heavyweight Kickboxing history in terms of the success-quality of opposition ratio and considering he fought a couple of generations of elite Heavyweights. The only top names from this period I can think of who he didn’t fight are Cro Cop and Alistair Overeem but I think Schilt and Cro Cop kind of missed each other timeline-wise, without checking I’m sure Schilt was more on the MMA side of things and in the UFC when Mirko was kicking heads in K-1. And Schilt and Overeem were friends and Golden Glory stablemates so I don’t think they’d have fought anyway.

Oh and he also did this to Mark Hunt...

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Edited by wandshogun09
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Remember when Schilt and Overeem were cageside for UFC 93 in 2009?

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I remember there was a bit of buzz about when these pictures surfaced. This was during Overeem’s horsemeat run in Japan and he’d just brutally KO’d Badr Hari. And Schilt was still at the top of his game in K-1. Seeing them pop up at a UFC show in Dublin seemed well random at the time and everyone thought they were meeting with Dana to sign contracts. Obviously fuck all came of it but they were fun times when you still had big names like that who could make the jump.

I should’ve been at that show. My cousins live in Dublin anyway and few mates made the trip over for this show. I was stuck in Birmingham because a close mate was getting married the day of the show and I was the best man. I could’ve seen the Shogun vs Coleman classic live! I remember getting texts during the reception from my cousin saying he thought he could see Overeem in the crowd and I thought he was talking bollocks until I saw the pictures a few days later on Sherdog. My mates met a bunch of the fighters at the airport as well. They got pictures with Hendo, Coleman, Phil Baroni, Rogan, Arianny and a few others. Coleman was the soundest from what they said. Even as beat up as he was he was really friendly they said. I should’ve been there. Instead I was eating lukewarm chicken wings, listening to Take That at a wedding reception and trying to fend off the advances of my mate’s 40-something year old Aunt who looked like Michael Barrymore with lipstick on. 

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