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MFC 25: VINDICATION

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Mirko Cro Cop vs. Jerome LeBanner at DREAM.4

Written by Jim Murphy   |   Friday, April 25 2008

Mirko Cro Cop celebrates his PRIDE Open Weight GP victoryMirko Cro Cop celebrates his PRIDE Open Weight GP victory

Assuming you don’t speak Croatian—or have an Eastern European correspondent on staff who does—you read it here first: Mirko Cro Cop will face Jerome Lebanner at DREAM.4 on June 16th at Tokyo’s Saitama Super Arena. While there hasn’t been an official announcement from the DREAM promotion, sources close to the Cro Cop camp confirmed the fight after visitors to the camp noticed that Mirko was training to fight a southpaw and connected the dots.

Cro Cop will look to build upon his success in his “comeback"? fight victory over Tatsuya Mizuno on 3/15. While his supporters were quick to claim that the “old Mirko"? was back after his mauling of overmatched Mizuno in less than a minute, many questions remain unanswered. Mizuno was essentially the last option opponent after a half dozen or so more formidable foes either turned down the fight (including “Minowa-man"? Ikuhisa Minowa, who claimed Yakuza threats against his life) or were rejected by Cro Cop’s camp (including K-1 kickboxer Mighty Mo and judoka Yoon Dong-Sik, last seen being pounded into oblivion by Brock Lesnar). While Minowa deserves a lot of credit for taking a fight against one of the most feared strikers in the sport on 4 days notice, the fact that he was an undersized heavyweight with only a passable 3-2 record against lower tier competition made the outcome all but preordained.

He should face at least a nominally more difficult test this time around against French K-1 kickboxer turned MMA fighter Jerome Lebanner. Lebanner’s kickboxing credentials are world class with a 73-14-2 career record including 59 wins by KO. He reached the finals of the 2007 K-1 GP and won the first round of that match against reigning K-1 champ Sammy Schilt. He caught a bad break in the 2nd round when a low kick by Schilt appeared to injure his recently repaired right knee, and his corner threw in the towel rather than risk further damage. At the very least, he’s a highly credible name to market to the Japanese fight fans.

On the other hand, he’s got roughly the same amount of MMA experience as Mizuno did coming in. For that matter, he’s also had essentially the same degree of success as Mizuno with a 3-1-1 mark. The three wins came against two fighters with a combined career mark of 14-13-1. The other win was against a quality opponent in judoka Yoshihiro Akiyama, though one whom Lebanner outweighed by nearly 50 pounds. Like many kickboxers turned MMA competitors, Lebanner is a handful if you stand and trade with him but extremely vulnerable when the fight goes to the ground. It’s also worth noting that he hasn’t fought in a MMA rules bout in over two years.

While there’s no argument with the result of Cro Cop’s devastation of Mizuno at DREAM.1 its difficult to accurately assess his form. On the plus side, his punching was extremely effective—actually more so than his vaunted kicking game. He threw several nice combinations, and it appeared that he’d been working on the technical aspects of his striking. Cro Cop also went against his usual MO by closing the distance and launching his striking barrage from close range, rather than try and maintain greater spacing as he’s done in the past. This would be consistent with the emphasis he’s placed on Muay Thai training since leaving the UFC, and could serve as a very valuable component of his game should he return to fight in the Octagon. On the other hand, its easy to look dominant against an overmatched undersized opponent.

This could very likely also be his strategy against Lebanner. While the matchup will be sold on the promise of a toe to toe standup war, Cro Cop has a much more nuanced striking repertoire and would do well to close the distance or even employ a Muay Thai clinch. This would take the kickboxer out of his game and allow Cro Cop to punish him with punches and knees. And as counterintuitive as it may sound, it wouldn’t be a huge surprise to see Cro Cop try and take the fight to the ground. He’s had a wealth of ground experience against the best in the business and despite the conventional wisdom he’s a better groundfighter than he gets credit for. Don’t forget that he did a very effective job on the ground against Josh Barnett in the PRIDE Open Weight Grand Prix final. Clearly Barnett was fatigued from a grueling split decision quarterfinal match against Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, but that doesn’t diminish the fact that he’s arguably the most effective functional wrestler in the sport.

Every indication is that DREAM is trying to put together a Cro Cop rematch with Fedor Emelianenko for New Years’ Eve, and this fight would fit nicely into that timetable. It’ll be interesting to see how Fedor looks against Tim Sylvia in July since he’s not fought a legitimate heavyweight since December 2006, but this is definitely the most marketable matchup available to the promotion. There are still plenty of questions to be answered about just how competitive Mirko is after his stormy tenure in the UFC, but he should have little trouble getting past Lebanner and keeping DREAM’s big money box office main event viable.

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are you stupid?
written by dominicwalliser , June 17, 2009
wth...u dont know anything about lebanner...hes not a kick boxer...hes a thai boxer(muay thai boxer)
so if mirko try to kick him he will do the same he did in the first match...grab his kick and throw him to the floor or just knee him like lebanner did...because lebbaner is a thai boxer...omg,men u know nothing>_>
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