Nope, that's about the right of it. He had started out going into the kick, but pulled away from it at the instant before the kick landed, so he was basically still. The kick landed to the back side of the head lined up with his temple. This clip Borat linked to earlier shows it a bit slower in the critical moment and from an alternative angle.


If the pic doesn't show up, go here and scroll down half way: http://www.fightreport.net/index.php?paged=2
you may have to advance pages in the future depending on how old the news gets. Maybe I'll just host the pic myself.

Ok, here we go


From the alternate angle, you can see that at no time was the kick in real contact with the jaw because crocop tries to turn away from the kick.

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Randy would beat Crocop with ease. Crocop has no ground defense. Randy would g'n'p him to death. I'll continue to say Crocop is currently, and by far, the most overrated fighter in MMA today. No ability to fight on the ground, no ability to take punishment. He's exciting, but that does not make a great fighter. If you can gauge Gonzaga by his perfomance against Crocop, Randy will have a much tougher time.

Didn't know Minotauro signed on to UFC. That is very intriguing (probably signed on to get away from Fedor ).

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Crocop has ground defense, I just believe the cage and the elbows came into play for the first time in Crocop's career, and he was unprepared. I say this because even Fedor couldn't inflict his ground game on crocop, and theres no question his Gn'P is the best in the game, bar none. I know Mirko lost that fight as well, but I've never seen ground defense as good as Mirko displayed in that fight. Who else can say theyve had Fedor on top of them for an extended period of time and came out of the fight without so much as a bloody nose or black eye. Also, Mirko has only ever been subbed once in his life (By Big Nog), so theres really not much besides the elbows from Gonzaga (which by the way, were at least defended well enough to get Herb Dean to eventually stand the fight back up) to support the notion that he has no ground defense.

PS that gif still shows him getting kicked in the jaw.

I hate you ooheadsoo... I refused to watch the replay at my friend's house because of CroCops ankle... and now you made me see it again.

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Herb Dean standing them up was a crime, and I'm glad Gonzaga didn't suffer because of it. He was working consistently, and Crocop didn't appear to be able to get up of his own accord. There have been larger lulls in other fights that didn't result in a stand-up. Crocop was defending himself, but offered nothing by way of countering, or even a method of getting himself back to his feet (same as the Fedor fight). His striking defense is lacking, also, it's only the threat of his offense that makes opponents tentative. I never understood the praise he gets, I feel it's completely unjustified.

Is his striking defense truly lacking? I believe he was great in K-1, beat Aerts etc. - the two times his striking looked bad, it was against Randleman and Gonzaga and in both cases Crocop 1) was afraid of the takedown 2) didn't make any offensive actions for some unknown reason. IIRC he dodged quite a lot of Gonzaga's punches.

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I wasn't addressing K-1. Much easier to defend strikes when that's all there is.

Obviously, fear of the takedown is a huge part of being open to strikes, in the same vein as I suggested his striking ability makes opponents tentative to strike him. He leaves himself open to strikes because he knows he needs to avoid being taken down to have any chance of winning a fight.

Are we all looking at the same thing?

Yep. Look at Crocop kicking Dos Caras Jr., Ron Waterman, or Wanderlei if you wanna see a hit on the temple. In any case he got KTFO, so who cares how. I can see how Sherdoggers get into such silly trivial disputes. The gif is far more telling than still frames, but props for taking the time to actually post those. My question now is, where does Mirko go from here? He doesn't exactly take his losses in stride, and basically threatens retirement if things don't go his way, but I know the Fertittas have put way too much $$ into him coming to the UFC to let him go after one loss. Does anyone know how many fights were in his contract?

I was wrong about the temple, it was the back of the head higher up in line with the temple, as I posted above after rewatching the clip, but it wasn't the jaw.

I think it was 6 fights.

If thats true about the 6 fights, thats enough to make a climb back to somewhere near (or right to) title contention. Arlovski is already second in line, and he's only had two wins since his loss(es) to Sylvia. If Mirko can win against some decent opponents (and there will be no shortage of those in the near future since Zuffa bought Pride), he could be right back in the loop, and I guarantee he'll ask for a rematch with Gonzaga, cuz he's far too proud to just let a loss be a loss.
I hope UFC signs more Pride fighters, most will be no-names fighting in the US for the first time ever, and bandwagoners will be a dime a dozen, but I love the successful crossovers, ie Anderson Silva. People think he's been a pro fighter for around a year. I cant wait to see the look on everyones face when someone like Sokodjou or Shogun KO's Chuck, or someone like Fabricio Werdum (who unfortunately just lost to Arlovski) subs Randy. Im patiently awaiting that day. Seeing Josh Barnett back in the UFC would be killer too.

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It could be because Gonzaga was throwing nothing but elbows, which you can't do in Pride

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Why do some people want Dana to sign away all the PRIDE stars to the UFC? Losing CC and Big Nog have been huge blows to PRIDE's once untouchable heavyweight division. I prefer PRIDE's presentation to the UFC and I'd rather see my favorite fighters fight on their shows. And what's the point of the MMA Super Bowl once a year if Dana just signs all of the PRIDE stars to his promotion anyway?

It's early, but the moves so far seem to signal that the Fertittas care more about the UFC than their new acquisition of PRIDE. Or they're just letting Dana have free rein to do whatever he wants with the PRIDE roster. Fedor has not signed an exclusive contract yet and Josh Barnett says no one from the newly formed company (PRIDE WORLDWIDE) has even contacted him about his status. Not good.

Sokoudjou is an exciting new fighter, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. He was KO'ed by one of Chuck's students, Glover Teixeira. Shogun has a good chance, but I'd still favor Liddell. And Shogun is one of my favorite fighters.

And Werdum looked like total ass in that fight against Arlovski. Jacare couldn't sub Randy and he is probably one of the top 3 BJJ practitioners in the world. I can't see Werdum doing any better than him.

If my hunch is correct, (sorry to liken these two things in advance) I think Dana and the Fertitta's will eventually pull a Vince McMahon and sink Pride completely in favour of the UFC monopolizing MMA in the near future. So I say screw having a once a year MMA Superbowl on new years or what have you, just make every pay-per-view card stacked as hell and you wont need one! If the UFC could tweak their rules slightly to allow kicks/stomps on the ground (which I know will be a pain with the NSAC, no need to point that out), and basically have a best-of-both-worlds set of rules, Id be all about it. And yes you're right about Randy not being a sucker for a sub, but if anyone can do it, its someone of Werdum's/Noguiera's capabilities. Werdum is all ground game (despite training with CC), and obviously didnt get to showcase his skills much in the Arlovski fight, cuz it was all standup. By the way I think Arlovski looked pretty sad in that fight too. He should have annihilated Werdum in an all stand up fight. After the first round it was a snoozefest.

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The fact is that crocop let gonzaga pull his arms out (not good) and did not raise his arms to deflect the strikes in a timely fashion (not good.) Elbows or not, this is crocop's bread and butter ground defense. There are lots of snoozefests on the ground in the ufc, and crocop's goal on the ground is to make the ref stand them up. I don't think it was just the fact that elbows were allowed. He shouldn't have allowed Gonzaga to pull his right arm out, and if Gonzaga was too explosive to hold for long, he should have raised his arm to either deflect or cover up, elbow or punch. However, Gonzaga's strikes were landing right from the start of the fight.