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Mirko put up a great fight against a young and huge Junior Dos Santos; he was fearless and gave it his all.
I don’t think age or stage of his career has anything to do with it. It’s more his size and skill evolution.
Perhaps it’s time for Mirko to concentrate training the right kick to be efficient, spend less time with the left, and when training the near-perfect left kick, work to minimize the telegraph, the swing motion, and clean up the small flaws that are noticeable on the tapes!
In my opinion, the main thing that’s not helping the situation is at 6’1”-6’2”, he should be fighting at 205 or even 185 pounds if he can cut the weight. It may be time to start being more realistic—the UFC is very competitive and has a stacked roster. As much as I believe size doesn’t matter, the UFC has been proving that train of thought wrong as of lately.
With heavyweights like Brock Lesnar, Shane Carwin, and Bobby Lashley on the horizon, Mirko Cro Cop has no business fighting heavyweight anymore and neither do a list of other fighters currently fighting at heavyweight. Maybe there is need of a division that's 206–230 pounds, a medium-heavyweight division.
Nevertheless, there are more and more big boys on the horizon that may be knocking on the doors of the UFC soon; the Debut of the TUF 10 season showed this.
The UFC also has a few other potential studs for pay per view on the horizon with names like Brett Rogers, a massive 6’5” 265-pound Strikeforce fighter who is booked to fight Fedor.
Mariusz Pudzianowski, five-time World's Strongest Man who holds a fourth kyu green belt in Kyokushin kaikan Karate and has been a competitive boxer for seven years, is planning to make his MMA debut in the near future.
Former IBF, IBO, and WBC heavyweight boxing champion Hasim Shariff Rahman also expressed interest in crossing over to MMA in an interview dated Feb. 26, 2009 with DreamFighters.com
All in all, hats off Cro Cop. Hang in there, man. After losing a fight to a huge, tough, young man like that and showing the heart you did, you proved that there is plenty of fight left in you. In my opinion, you just may need to go back to the drawing board and make some slight career adjustments!
Links to some big heavyweight names peeping in the windows of the UFC:
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