Some talk from the man himself:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=or0_VGh85bM
Some analysis from mmajunkie:
In the purgatory between totally finished and all the way back, there’s Mirko Filipovic | MMAjunkie
Thoughts? Should he go for his health and let this show he closed out the most dramatic of losses? Or if he can be competitive against lesser competition should he try?
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=or0_VGh85bM
Some analysis from mmajunkie:
In the purgatory between totally finished and all the way back, there’s Mirko Filipovic | MMAjunkie
Personally? I'd love to see Cro Cop vs Nog II. I think either should not be spending their last combat days fighting young guys. These young fighters are either good enough to have a future and will beat them, or shouldn't be fighting in the UFC and it will be a fight with the same level of competition minus the historic value.Here’s where anyone who loved watching that old “Cro Cop,” couldn’t help but get that sinking feeling. He wasn’t doing terribly. He wasn’t doing much of anything. Was Filipovic going to make us sad? Even worse, was he going to use all five rounds to do it?
Then in the third, without warning, this outburst of elbows. One shuddering explosion of short, swift violence, and suddenly Gonzaga’s legs were failing him. You could almost feel his confusion. How did this happen? Where did it come from?
He recovered his senses just long enough to regain his guard and take a breath. There now, maybe it was over. Maybe that was all the old man had. Soon he discovered that Filipovic was just focusing his energy, which he would then direct with great force and efficiency through the point of his elbow and straight into Gonzaga’s skull.
By the time referee Leon Roberts finally stopped it, Gonzaga had rolled to his side and wrapped his arms around the leaking hole in his head, all thought of fighting back now vanished. The blood poured down his forearms and onto the canvas. Filipovic was so happy, he seemed to almost forget about the deep, dark hole on the side of his own head.
A win like this, I suppose it’s redemption. It’s a nice story, is what it is, or at least it would be if it ended right this instant, which it won’t.
Perhaps no single person symbolizes Filipovic’s underachieving UFC years better than Gonzaga. He was the opponent the first time they met, there to help sell Filipovic’s impending UFC title shot. He’s the guy we started paying attention to only after he Cro Cop’d “Cro Cop.” That knockout loss to Gonzaga marked, if not the beginning of Filipovic’s decline, then at least the end of his ascent.
To come back and beat him now, at this late stage in his career, how could it not feel a little like exorcising a demon? It’s just, if you cared about Filipovic’s long-term health, you might be tempted not to read too much more into it than that.
Thoughts? Should he go for his health and let this show he closed out the most dramatic of losses? Or if he can be competitive against lesser competition should he try?