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Can Randy Couture Defeat Mirko Cro Cop?

Author: Jon Murray
Date Posted: March 17, 2007

Randy Couture is the current UFC Heavyweight Champion, courtesy of a sound beating that he gave Tim "The Maine-iac" Sylvia on March 3rd, 2007. The fight went the full 5 rounds, but Randy Couture dominated the action from the first punch, right up until the final take down. In fact, the first punch thrown put Tim Sylvia on the canvas, something that very few people thought that Randy Couture would be able to do. Conventional wisdom was that Tim Sylvia was too big, strong, young and too good a striker for forty three year old Randy Couture to overcome; Randy Couture has made a career out of defying conventional wisdom.

The next question that every Mixed Martial Arts fan is asking is; "Can Randy Couture find a way to defeat Mirko Cro Cop?". It's a simple question, but there is no simple answer. To figure out this riddle, we must go through each fighter's history, looking at various skills of their past opponents and how they performed against these opponents. Of course, once we're done with the analysis, we need to apply "The Couture Factor". The Couture Factor is simply stated as:

"Never, ever count Randy Couture out"

This should be written in stone and kept in the UFC vaults to be placed ring side for each and every Randy Couture fight.

First, let's categorize our two warriors. First off, I th‌ink it's pretty fair to call Mirko Cro Cop a striker. He is probably the best striker in MMA today. It's also easy to Categorize Randy Couture, he is a wrestler, sure he knows submissions and is a decent striker, but when it comes right down to it, Randy likes to get you in the clinch, take you down and ground and pound his way to victory.

Mirko Cro Cop vs Wrestlers: For the purpose of this piece, I'm going to call Fedor a wrestler, although he has advanced submission and striking skills, his game is largely similar to a wrestler. Here is a list of the well known wrestlers that Mirko Cro Cop has faced:
1) Fedor Emelianenko
2) Mark Coleman
3) Kevin Randleman
4) Josh Barnett

Against the above fighters, Mirko Cro Cop has two wins over Josh Barnett, a win over Mark Coleman, a loss to Fedor and splits a win and a loss with Kevin Randleman. That makes him 4-2 against wrestlers.

Randy Couture vs strikers: Since I only picked four wrestlers for Cro Cop, I will narrow my striker list to four for Randy Couture:
1) Tim Sylvia
2) Chuck Liddell
3) Vitor Belfort
4) Pedro Rizzo

Randy's record against this list of great strikers is one win over Sylvia, one win and two losses to Liddell, two wins and a loss to Belfort and two wins over Rizzo. That makes Randy Couture 6-3 vs strikers.

They've each won 66% of their fights against the other's style, so, their records do not show an advantage to either fighter.

Like the fight between Sylvia and Couture, many fans are picking Mirko Cro Cop to easily defeat Randy Couture, they think that Cro Cop, like Chuck Liddell will be able to avoid Randy's take downs and pick him apart with superior striking skills. These fans may indeed be correct, if you watch many of Mirko Cro Cop's fights, they end similarly to Randy's losses to Chuck Liddells, a hard punch grounding the opponent and Cro Cop moving in to finish with hard shots while standing over his opponent. Mirko Cro Cop also has a weapon that Chuck rarely uses, high kicks to the head. Cro Cop's left shin to the right side of an opponents face often signals the end of the night, just ask Wanderlei Silva, Igor Vovchanchyn or my personal favorite, Dos Caras Jr. who came into the Pride ring in a wrestlers mask and woke up wondering where he was.

If Randy is to pull this fight out he must find a way to take Cro Cop down. This will not be easy as Mirko has a sprawl very similar to Chuck Liddell's and he will make Randy pay on the way in.

So, to answer my own question, can Randy Couture defeat Mirko Cro Cop, of course he can. This is MMA and on any given night one talented fighter has a chance against another. The better question is; will Randy Couture Defeat Mirko Cro Cop? To answer that, we will need to wait until fight night.

About The Author

Jon is the editor of Ultimate Fighter MMA, the BEST place to find UFC predictions, news and gossip. Jon also runs a number of holiday themed web sites, including Halloween Village and Christmas Wonderland

Article Source: JKD Street Combat - online collection of Mixed Martial Arts articles.

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