Mirko Cro Cop to meet Alistar Overeem at Dream.6 in Tokyo

Croatian sports media sources are reporting that the long awaited fight between former PRIDE Open Weight GP champion Mirko Cro Cop and Dutch kickboxer Alistair Overeem will finally occur at the DREAM.6 event to be held September 23 at Tokyo’s Saitama Super Arena.

The backstory of the (hopefully) impending Cro Cop/Overeem fight reads more like a script for “Days of Our Lives” than a fight preview. Most serious MMA fans know the Cro Cop story; however let’s recap the saga for those who don’t. Mirko Cro Cop won the PRIDE Open Weight GP in dominant fashion, culminating by his performance in the semis and finals where he defeated Wanderlei Silva and Josh Barnett on the same night. Having defeated two of the toughest fighters in the world by TKO and tapout respectively (though it appeared that Barnett tapped as much to a severe poke in the eye as to an accumulation of strikes), a rematch with Fedor Emelianenko seemed all but inevitable. In fact, in late September 2006 it wasn’t difficult to find those who suggested that Cro Cop deserved to be mentioned in the same breath as the “best heavyweight on the planet”.

Shortly after the first of the year, Mirko signed a deal with the Ultimate Fighting Championship. Mirko’s UFC tenure started successfully, as he defeated tough but limited striker Eddie Sanchez at UFC 67 in February, 2007. Everything about Cro Cop’s performance was spot on, and Zuffa did an excellent job at making him a “big deal”. His choice of the famous “PRIDE Theme Song” as his ring entrance music was somewhat prophetic as several months later UFC owners Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta bought the Japanese fighting organization as it teetered on the brink of insolvency. Sanchez was the perfect opponent for Cro Cop’s debut, tough enough to not seem like a pushover but someone who’d stand right in front of his opponent. Cro Cop stalked him all around the cage landing punches and kicks at will en route to a TKO victory.

Cro Cop was penciled in as the presumptive challenger for new UFC champion Randy Couture in what would have been a huge money fight. The plan was undone by some questionable matchmaking by the UFC’s Joe Silva: in what should have been a “tune up fight” to showcase Cro Cop in advance of the Couture fight, the promotion pitted him against rugged striker/BJJ champion Gabriel Gonzaga at an event in Manchester. Gonzaga mauled Cro Cop for most of the first round before landing his own devastating version of the Croatian’s trademark high left kick. Cro Cop went down like he got shot, and Gonzaga went on to get beaten down by Couture in his only defense of the heavyweight title before leaving the company.

Cro Cop’s UFC tenure ended with a lackluster decision loss to French kickboxer Cheick Kongo. Though it could be argued that Cro Cop showed courage by simply surviving against the bigger, more powerful opponent something clearly wasn’t right. Immediately afterwards, he announced that he was having surgery to correct a deviated septum that impacted his breathing. The surgery apparently was a success, and an apparently rejuvenated Cro Cop sounded every bit like a fighter anxious to return to battle.

This is where things get a little murky, beginning with his departure from the UFC. Despite having three fights left on his UFC deal, he somehow was able to work out a settlement with Zuffa that allowed him to sign with the new Japanese MMA promotion DREAM. DREAM, with a multitude of former PRIDE employees in the front office, quickly became the standard bearer of MMA in Japan and presumably Co Cop was to be the centerpiece of their heavyweight division. After a half dozen or so opponents fell through for one reason or another (some didn’t want to fight Cro Cop, while others were nixed by his management), Cro Cop easily defeated overmatched Tatsuya Mizuno.  Cro Cop hasn’t fought since.

Ultimately, this is a very intriguing matchup not only in the “in-ring” component, but the meta aspect as well. There have been plenty of acrimonious words tossed back and forth, so intensity shouldn’t be a problem. In the ring, it’ll be a striking war with two of the heaviest hitters (or kickers, in Cro Cop’s case) in the world going toe to toe. Equally fascinating is the fact that it’s a matchup of a riddle versus an enigma wrapped in a shroud of mystery (with apologies to Winston Churchill).  There’s really no way to accurately foretell what will happen; only that it should be explosive and brutal.