The Shrine

The original plan was to have Cro Cop challenge Fedor for the title at PRIDE: Shockwave this December, but Cro Cop is currently recovering from a foot injury (which he got surgery for in October).

The December event will likely see Josh Barnett, the runner up, challenging Fedor in the place of Cro Cop. That leaves Cro Cop free to challenge for the title in February.

PRIDE 32 saw a lot of huge stars including: Josh Barnett, Shogun, Hendo, Fedor, Coleman (I think Coleman will be out for a good while), and more.

There are still many of PRIDE's largest stars left: Nog, Cro Cop, Wanderlai Silva, Takanori Gomi, Sakurai, Denis Kang, Igor Vovchanchyn, Rampage, Kharitonov, Fujita, Mark Hunt, Aleks, and more.

Nog, despite losing to Barnett, is still probably the #2 guy next to Fedor, though Cro Cop is strongly considered #2 now. He lost to Barnett by a split decision, so it could have just as easily gone the other way. Cro Cop can't beat Nog, Cro Cop's weapon is his knockout kick, but Cro Cop couldn't knock him out, even Fedor couldn't knock him out with one of the most famous punches in PRIDE history (sounded like a shotgun, would have killed most people). The only one who he has convincingly lost to in his career is Fedor (who took the title from him back in 2003).

Cro Cop and Wanderlei, not much I need to say about these guys, I think everyone here is very familiar with them.


One fight I would definately LOVE to see is any North American Boxing champion vs. Igor Vovchanchyn. Back in the 90's, Igor Vovchanchyn was essentially considered invinsible when it came to boxing, kickboxing, and MMA. Boxing is where he really excells though. If you followed boxing in the 90's, you may not have seen him before (no champion would accept his challenge), but you probably heard a lot about him. He's still pretty damn good, despight the large number of fights he's fought.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JW5nwAzgXjU

Seek, Halloween's over man :-)

Eh, let him keep the nick. At least the avatar's cooler than that picture of Che he was dragging around.

I haven't seen the Cro Cop Nogueira fight, but I consider Cro Cop the stronger fighter by transitive property. While Fedor decisively beat both of them, I thought Cro Cop was the greater threat; he even landed a good shot on Fedor that momentarily stunned him and probably would have knocked out most fighters.

Kupek wrote:I haven't seen the Cro Cop Nogueira fight, but I consider Cro Cop the stronger fighter by transitive property. While Fedor decisively beat both of them, I thought Cro Cop was the greater threat; he even landed a good shot on Fedor that momentarily stunned him and probably would have knocked out most fighters.

The reason why I rank Nog #2 over Cro Cop is not based on how well he did against Fedor, but rather how well he has done against everyone else.
Cro Cop has been finished twice before, once by Randleman, and once by Nog. Nog has never been finished by anyone, and only has two unaminous decisions against him, both by Fedor. Also by the fact that Nog has a better win/loss ratio than Cro Cop.

I could very well be wrong here, these are two guys who are very hard to judge. They are both great fighters, two different styles, and have both fought most of the top heavyweights. Comparing Nog vs. Sapp to Cop vs. Sapp, it is easy to see that Cro Cop did a WAY better job against Sapp: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aczk-cp7Lu4 (This was actually Sapp's best fight, it is quite entertaining; you get to see some moves that you normally do not see in MMA =P)

For the record, I know Sapp is far from being the best, but I am still a fan. He is quite popular in Japan.

Holy shit, was that an old school Undertaker Tombstone piledriver? I didn't think that was an actual legitimate MMA move.

Zeus wrote:Seek, Halloween's over man :-)

OK, fine, I've switched back to normal.