Mirko "Cro Cop" Filipovic retired in the cage from MMA, following a loss to Roy Nelson UFC 137 on Oct. 29, 2011. Since then he beat Shinichi Suzukawa in the first, and lost to Oleksiy Oliynyk, also in the first. In addition, he resumed a kickboxing career after nearly a decade away from the ring, going 6-1, including a win over Ray Sefo at "Cro Cop Final Fight" early in 2012.
Now he has signed to fight Japanese Olympic judo gold medalist Satoshi Ishii in an Inoki Genome Fight (IGF) MMA fight on Aug. 23, 2014 in Tokyo, Japan. Ishii is on an eight-fight win streak, and has not lost since facing Fedor Emelianenko in 2011.
Is Ishii still based in the US or back in Japan? Who is he training with? He entered a/some US judo tournaments, not sure if that was just to stay sharp or is he thinking of going back? I respect his effort to give MMA his best shot training everywhere he did but does not appear he will be a top MMA guy.
If Ishii wins this I'd really like to see him go to the UFC at 205. He'll have fought basically every notable HW outside of the major orgs, even though most were quite past their primes when he faced them. He needs some real competition.
boneskodaiceman - Why do they insist on feeding Ishii to the legends? He needs a real training camp. It seems they just want to make money and that's it.
boneskodaiceman - Why do they insist on feeding Ishii to the legends? He needs a real training camp. It seems they just want to make money and that's it.
Ishii is basically being bankrolled by Inoki, in other words, being bankrolled by Yakuza. They want/need to have their indominatable Japanese champion, so they set up Ishii to be "the man."
To do this, they have fed him a consistent diet of tomato cans, washed up has-beens, and formerly famous MMA/puro-resu guys, that he can more or less ragdoll.
Even then, he's not really over with the Japanese fight fans, other than the puro-resu types. In addition, while he's winning, it's not in a really impressive fashion, and he's struggled often against guys that he should have no problem with.
For fuck's sake, the guy got swept and took GnP from Jerome LeBanner, for fuck's sake. LeBanner. A over the hill musclebound kickboxer reversed and pounded a fucking Olympic gold medalist.
Satoshi-kun is never going to be a serious threat in MMA.
RyannVonDoom - Broke by touch 2 weeks ago. Ishii took the easier fight. Too bad he didnt take on heath herring like originally offered.
Is Heath looking to take fights again? I'd love to see him back in the ring.. I assume this means he must be totally clear of that UFC contract they shackled him to
