PRIDE legend Mirko Cro Cop stepped away from the UFC in 2011, but apparently he’s still keeping tabs on what’s going on over in his former place of business and he’s got a thing or two to say about Alistair Overeem’s brutal loss to Antonio Silva at the weekend, and none of it is flattering.
Cro Cop has history with Overeem having fought the Dutchman back at DREAM 6 in 2008, but the fight was declared a no-contest when Cro Cop landed an illegal blow to the groin.
Apparently there’s no love lost between them as in a typically frank interview with fightsite.hr, Cro Cop points to Overeem’s arrogance and lack of drugs for his sub-par performance that ended rather abruptly when Silva laid siege to him with a barrage of heavy blows to the head.
“I wasn’t surprised by Silva’s victory at all and I had believed he would win. I don’t want to come off as a smart-ass or say I knew it all along, so I’ll explain why I’d believed so. First, Silva is a big tough guy with a huge heart who had demolished Fedor and he needs no better reference than that, and Alistair hugely underestimated him and belittled him with his arrogant statements, so this mobilized Silva in the best possible way. Second, Silva is a natural heavyweight, and Alistair – for the first time since way back in 2007, when he began to gain huge weight – fought without the drugs he had used constantly for years, including testosterone and all the other shit that goes with it.”
“Watching the weigh-in, I saw that his muscles mass was nowhere near his usual, he had the weight, but he wasn’t nearly as carved out and defined, since he couldn’t take anything because he was watched by the Athletic Commission. This also reflects on the psyche of a man who’s been using stuff to increase his strength, endurance, pain tolerance and aggressiveness for years, and now there was none of that. Alistair is an excellent fighter, but he still owes that excellence to something that’s dirty and unpermitted, and, in the end, very dangerous to health.”
“I don’t think he was concerned by that, he wanted success at any cost. And the third thing is, Alistair had behaved so arrogantly that someone needed to put him back in his place. His belittling of Silva was repulsive, saying that after beating up Silva he’d go for the belt, and at the weigh-in and entering the arena he acted like he invented the fighting sport, and he’s been behaving with so much arrogance lately that I’m glad Silva put him back in his place and taught him a lesson! Congratulations Silva, from the heart!”
Since leaving the UFC, Cro Cop has returned to his kickboxing roots and has got back to winning ways, notching up three victories in a row and will next be seen at the K-1 World Grand-Prix Quarter-Finals in March.
