If this happens….This will definetly be a year of upsets. If I was a favorite I would be timid. I love Randy, but he’s crazy on this one. CC knock out in the 1st round

Wishful thinking and seriously: who can blame him? I wouldn’t wanna be the 43 years old champ waiting for my fight with Cro Cop either.

Cro Cop’s sprawl and his takedown defense in general are just so good. If gonzaga gets him on his back, maybe, maybe the fight is close, but cro cop is not some slouch. He might have one of the top 3 sprawls in the world.

yeah i would agree with wishful thinking. but couture is definately not afraid of Cro Cop. Couture is a true warrior. Not that i think he is going to be an overly dominant champion but you have to respect Couture more than to think he is afraid to fight Cro Cop.

Wishful thinking and seriously: who can blame him? I wouldn’t wanna be the 43 years old champ waiting for my fight with Cro Cop either.

I was going to say exactly the same thing,but looks like you got there first.When you look at what Chuck did to Randy it makes you wonder,what kind of damage could Crocop do to him,Id actualy be concerned for Randy watching a fight between him and CC.He is 43 years old and a left high kick from CC to the temple would be pretty devestating,maby even life threatening.However Randy shocked us all when he fought the Maineiac so you never know maby he could upset Crocop aswell,but I doubt it.I think CC has gonzagas number tonight,he is so focused and composed and he is hungry for that title.Im a Mirko Crocop fan all the way,I have seen every single one of his fights from K1 to PRIDE several times and this guy deserves a title.

GO ON CROCOP ITS TIME TO FUCK GONZAGAS ASS UP

randy don’ want to face cro cop that’s whay he picks gonzaga.
If this happens randy will smile like matt hughes did with GSP at ufc 69.

Guys, it’s nothing but hype for Randy’s fight with Mirko. I seriously doubt he believes this. The Couture head games have begun.

He kinda has a point, we have no idea what Mirko’s ground game is, if any. He is confident in it, but confident and able to survive are pretty different.

Tim, Matt, Rich and George were all confident as well remember. Oh, and Tito was confident he could beat Dana without taking a scratch until the week of the fight. Next thing you know the UFC has 4 new former champions. And Tito is “Oh, i might get hurt and not be able to fight and make money! Oh, and i won’t get paid! For a fight i wouldn’t resign without and insisted in having in my contract.”

Confidence isn’t worth the paper you write it on and eat so you can say you are full of confidence.

we have no idea what Mirko’s ground game is

Werdum and Corletta have both said he is around a brown belt now. Corletta has Mirko committed to spend time in Brazil to attain his black. Gonzaga just won the Mundials, an event I follow every year, but they dont kick in that event….

But what will that “almost brown” mean in the octagon? Sparring and fighting in a real fight can’t be the same can they?

I am not a fighter at all and am avoiding the spoiler thread like the plague today so i can see the outcome myself. BUT WOW I WANNA KNOW!! lol

I look at it like Eddie Sanchez and Cro Cop before, Eddie is thought of as a striker and he was confident he could take a strike and deliver, we saw how his confidence erode fast.

Oh well, all speculation i guess for all of us. We will see. From what i understand you can’t appreciate Mirko’s power until he hits you, so it may never make it to the ground anyhow. Well, it’s unlikely it will make it to the ground, ok, doubtful…. er

KNOCK HIM OUT MIRKO!!!!!

Mirko’s one of the 2 or 3 best HWs in the world. Gonzaga doesn’t really have a prayer.

I love Couture, but I don’t think he has a shot either. IMO, the real championship will be Cro Cop against Nog. At least with these latest additions, the UFC HW division is far more watchable now.

Fedor failed to take Mirko and keep him down. He’s one of the best at take down defence. I don’t know much about Goganza, but I really doubt he’ll be the second to submit Mirko, I don’t think hes in Minatauros or Fedors league.

I imagine Mirko will capitalise on Goganza’s take down attempts with a few counters. Goganza’s got to land a sucker punch in my opinion to stand any chance.

i dont know about his submission defence but his ground game is better on both top and bottom. He had balance enough to stay on top of josh barnett in there second fight in pride 30 and his ground defense was the only thing that saved him in his bout against the russian experiment fedor. In that fight his suprising ground defense was the talk of the fight. so we do know cc has improved but this is verses ground and pound type fighters it will still be interesting to see how he defends submissions

like mike tyson said, everyone has a gameplan till they get hit in the face

randy is just trying to play head games. he is trying to sell his fight with cro cop. i don’t blame him, but there is no way fat ass gonzaga is gonna beat cro cop. dana would cry like a little girl if cro cop lost, bc he still has to pay him 350 a fight for the remainder of his contract.

It is definately head games, I think Randy wants CC to know his opinion of him and plant a little seed in the back of his mind. Make him think he’s not indestructible. Randy is the smartest fighter in the business.

wishful thinking

it didn’t even look like gonzaga was training real hard when on the hype up show, i think cro cop is gonna kill him, like the dude said above, just wishful thinking probably…

I have this gut feeling that Gabriel Gonzaga is going to win tonight.

I mean is it that hard to believe?, I am still in shock that Serra knocked St.Pierre, but he did it!

Even though I am Canadian, I am happy for Serra, he seems like a good guy. Good for him.

But when I saw Hughes mouthing " I’m loving it", that rattled me because he’s thinking for sure that he will beat Serra.

SunnY

cro cop is no slouch when it comes to submissions either, watch some of his tapes from pride and you will see a man with some pretty good submissions, so i think gonzaga is totally screwed with this fight.

Maybe it’s just a mental tactic for Couture. His predictions in the past have been questionable at times, he chose lytle to knock out hughes as well…Couture is the man, the best ufc fighter ever but i think he’s gona be wrong on this one.

Guys, it’s nothing but hype for Randy’s fight with Mirko. I seriously doubt he believes this. The Couture head games have begun.

Exactly!

All head games. Like somebody already said. The Couture head games have begun.

GONZAGA has been clearly underated for a long time! He possesses a combination of Ground Skills KO Punch like none else in the game. Next UFC HW Champion for sure.

If u doubt Couture your fucking crazy.Randy has been in this game to long,he has seen it all.There is no way CC is going to go through Couture,it wont happen.If Couture does’t win I’ll never type another opinion again.Thanks

Randy was half right, but he aint getting by Gonzaga. That guy just made me a believer.

Couture’s never wrong.

i would quote all of you and call everyone dumbasses but i previously thought the same thing cotoure is good at makin us look like jack asses

MTUFC hates Couture.I’ll tell you what go fuck your self, YOU DON’T NO SHIT about fighting.Don’t make anymore predictions.U said Gonzaga didn’t have a chance,look what happend.Please don’t doubt Couture,he always proves internet geeks like u wrong.U FUCK.

Please put my comment through

I must say that honestly I am not surprised. I have watched Pride and UFC and I don’t think the top pride contenders are that good. I think this is another blow for the Pride folks out there. And for all of you that say one lucky punch or kick can end a fight quick, Cro Cop was dominated the entire fight. He couldn’t do anything

i would quote all of you and call everyone dumbasses but i previously thought the same thing

cotoure is good at makin us look like jack asses

By the way that’s what everyone said when he fought Sylvia. You can NEVER count Randy out.

sorry quoted the wrong one meant to quote

“Randy was half right, but he aint getting by Gonzaga. That guy just made me a believer.”

I predict Gonzaga knocking Cro cop out cold in the first round with a high head kick! just kidding

Randy is the John Madden of this shit!

Cro cop looked terrible to me out there, what he hell happened?
 Nothing lucky about the leg kick, cro cop had his hands down, maybe he was still a little dazed from the beating on the ground. Like someone mentioned earlier I’m not going to quote anyone, feel tempted though, some people are so arrogant with there opinions. Some people don’t seem to get it, ALMOST ANYTHING can happen in mma and its just plain dumb to completely count someone out. I thought cro cop would win and there seems to be a weird trend with under dogs beating the favorites with there own game. I honestly thought cro cop was a little over rated, good fighter though but a little too one dimensional. If you can’t really mix it up you become too predictable and other fighters will take advantage of that. I’m not counting randy out ever again like I did with him fighting tim sylvia and think he could beat gonzaga but you never know.

It looks to me that as of lately a new era has started in
MMA and now it’s not enough anymore to be great in one aspect of the game (kickboxing or grapling or wrestling) and good/decent in other one or two. New generation of
of champs is great in two aspects and good in a third.
The sport has evolved again.

I am angry