Cro Cop Plays By His Own Rules, Which Is Weird, Considering He’s a Cop and All

One of the high points of last night’s UFC 99 was the triumphant return of Mirko Cro Cop (

Mirko Filipovic). The sensational light heavyweight was trying to rebound from an initially disappointing three-fiight run in UFC.
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↵Cro Cop plowed through the potato sack in front of him, that being Mustapha Al-Turk, with a first-round TKO (yes, it was something of an eye poke). So now, for the momentous UFC 100, Cro Cop will continue his comeback by fighting... what? No? That’s all? Uh, okay? ↵↵⇥Not long after stopping Mostapha Al-Turk in the first round of UFC 99 on Saturday at Lanxess Arena in his first fight in the UFC since back-to-back losses in 2007, Filipovic informed UFC president Dana White that he had signed a three-fight contract with the Japan-based DREAM.
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↵⇥White had signed Filipovic less than a month ago to a one-fight deal, the first time in more than nine years that he’d done that. He had worked out terms on two additional fights, but said he’d only put pen to paper for Saturday’s bout. ↵↵Well, we’re sure Dana White will have a reasoned, dispassionate response and oh god ... who gave him a chainsaw ... he doesn’t need a chainsaw:
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↵↵⇥“Isn’t that a dirty [expletive] thing to do?” White asked rhetorically after being queried about Filipovic’s deal with DREAM. “He [expletived] me. The first time in the history of the company I do one over the phone. He promised me a three-fight deal and he [expletived] me.”
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↵⇥“He didn’t keep his word,” said White, who added he had a two-hour talk with Filipovic on the day Filipovic texted and asked to be able to return. “He talked about honor and all this other [expletive] and he [expletived] me.
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↵⇥“He fed me this bull [expletive] about wanting to take a run for the title, and what I think he did was, he went out and did this. He turned down every other [expletive] fighter I offered him, because I needed him to fight Cain. He didn’t just poke Al-Turk; he poked me, too.” ↵↵We’re grownups and we’re not going to get into the cheap jokes here. It’s a little entertaining to see such a labor-unfriendly association like the UFC complaining about being, ahem, expletived.
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↵We’re not sure what Cro Cop sees in DREAM, though; he might be more popular in Japan (in fact, he most certainly is), but the competition’s just not there. That, and all bridges to the UFC are in charred, smoldering remains. Depending on whether he thinks he’s still a top-level fighter, this was either extremely pragmatic or extremely stupid on Cro Cop’s part.↵