Francisco Santos Mir is an American fighter of Mixed Martial Arts, he is holding a black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu and kempo karate. He is two-time former UFC champion in the heavy category and is one of the most dangerous fighters of today. He defeated some of the best fighters in the world in his career such are Brock Lesnar, Minotaur, Tim Sylvia, Tank Abbott, Antoni Hardonk, Cheik Kongo and many others. His specialty is taking the opponent down to the ground using his huge strength and mass, and then choking him on the neck, or blocking him with his arms or legs, which creates his rival an indescribable amount of pain and forces him to retire the match. His potential disadvantages are: he isn’t a puncher, he doesn’t like to fight standing on his feet and tends to move the fight on the floor as soon as possible. He is also a fighter on the counters, so not really a fighter that gets straight at the rival but rather waits for his chance for a counterpunch or rival’s mistake so he can take the fight down to the floor.
The strongest punch
Mirko ” CRO COP” Filipovic is a boxer, kick-boxer, K-1 fighter and a MMA fighter. He is one of the most famous fighters in the world. He is also one of the rare fighters that has been equally successful in the K1 rings (boxing, kick-boxing, thai boxing…) and PRIDE and UFC (MMA). He has got a very long and diverse career which I believe none of the fighters has had: 33 K-1 fights, 37 MMA fights, 44 amateur boxing matches, mostly international. He is certainly one of the best punchers in the world, which was confirmed by many top fighters he met throughout his career. He is the most dangerous with his legs and killer high-kicks in the head, which he used to send many of his rivals straight to a hospital. The strength of his kicks is over 750kgs (measured in Japan, even though he said he can do even better as he did it in the clothes and wearing shoes). His potential disadvantages: he doesn’t pressure his opponent, more often waits for the counters and if some top fighter exposes him to straight punches that often ruins his focus and takes away the strength, as the Cro-cop often waits for the opponent’s mistakes for too long. So far he’s defeated a lot of top kick-boxers and the world’s best wrestlers such are: Fujita, Sakuraba, Heath Hearing, Vovcancin, Aleksander Emelianenko, Josh Barnet (3 times), Mark Coleman, Ibrahim Magomedom, Wanderlei Silva and others… He is the PRIDE Grand prix tournie winner from 2006.
Cro Cop`s win
The biggest disadvantage for Filipovic here is that he only had 5 weeks of preparation before this match, jumping in as a replacement for injured Minotaur. He accepted the invitation by the UFC owner for probably his toughest match of the career. So here we will be watching a clash between two different techniques. On one hand, Mir is a top fighter when on the floor disliking the fight with the legs, and on another hand is one of the best kickers of all times, preferring the fight when standing up. Mir’s problem is that he can’t allow Filipovic to kick him but has to take him down to the floor as soon as possible, while Filipovic is one of the rare fighters with a bit smaller mass but much bigger speed and excellent versatility, which gives him one of the best defenses from being taken down in the world. Additionally, Mir can’t pressure Filipovic as he is just an average puncher, exactly the kind that suites Filipovic the most. I think, well actually I’m quite positive that this kind of an underestimating odds (which will surely drop) are set so high only cause of the lack of time Filipovic had to prepare for this clash, but this is a sport where only one move can resolve the match and in my opinion that is how Cro Cop became the MMA fighting legend in the first place. Good luck!
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Prediction:
Tip: 2
Odd: 2.65
Bookie: Bwin
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