Respect. It’s the one word every fighter seeks, and one that Mirko Cro Cop has earned in a career that has seen him dubbed as one of MMA’s all-time greatest strikers while defeating the likes of Kazuyuki Fujita, Kazushi Sakuraba, Heath Herring, Igor Vovchanchyn, Aleksander Emelianenko, Josh Barnett, Kevin Randleman, Mark Coleman, and Wanderlei Silva.
But there is another side to the respect equation, one that can see an established fighter get complacent as the years go on, and eventually the people who prepare you for your fights are as much fans and friends as they are training partners. Cro Cop, after a less than impressive Octagon run that saw him go 2-3 in his first five UFC fights, realized that he had fallen victim to this unique phenomenon, and instead of ignoring it, he shook up his camp before his UFC 110 fight with Anthony Perosh in February, opting to go back to his roots to train with the renowned Ivan Hippolyte and his gang of stalwarts at Amsterdam’s Vos Gym.
“I was not just respect, but I don’t think they were on the level like the professionals from Amsterdam,” said Cro Cop of his former camp on a recent media teleconference. “I don’t want to offend them, because they are my friends who came to help me, but they’re just not that kind of level of the fighters that Ivan can offer me in Amsterdam or that I can find in the Vos Gym. It’s one thing to spar with friends of mine, who are good, very solid fighters, but to spar with Remy Bojansky and other K-1 stars is something quite different.”
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