Cro Cop's Career IS Salvagable

Note:  Let me start off by saying that I am a very big fan of Cro Cop, but I will try my best to be fair in my analysis.  Everything posted here is also strictly opinion.

Despite the downward trend of the Croatian's career, he is still one of the greatest heavyweights of all time.  Mirko holds wins over Josh Barnett, Mark Coleman, Heath Herring, Hidehiko Yoshida, Igor Vovchanchyn, and many others with most of them being in devestating fashion.  I don't care if you are Fedor or Randy Couture or Jesus himself, if you let Cro Cop stalk you, you WILL be in for a night of torment and pain. 

However, he has fallen under the fate akin to other greats such as Matt Hughes and Chuck Liddell.  After fighting the same way for so many years, the MMA world has developed a solid game plan to combat his style. Fighters have figured out that the best way to fight Mirko is to bring the fight to him.  If you push the pace against him, he begins to panic and comes out of his element.  With losses to Gabriel Gonzaga and Cheick Kongo, plus the dissappointing display against Allistar Overeem, his career has hit rock bottom without a doubt. 

Despite these adversitites though, he can still hop on the saddle and become just as dangerous as the days of old.  To do so however, he will have to make some serious changes in the way he fights and trains. 

• LEARN TO EFFECTIVELY COUNTER-PUNCH

He must learn to develop effective strikes while moving backwards and using angles to make his opponent pay for coming after him. Cro Cop's striking is incredible while he is the hunter, but begins to become frustrated when fighters get in his face.  Being able to do this will make fighters less inclined to come to him and will allow him to fight the way he wants to.

• UTILIZE THE CLINCH

Cro Cop is a very good kickboxer.  However, he is more of a Western kickboxer that relies on punches with leg strikes from the outside.  In the clinch he seems to become lost and tries to just back away with no real answer for it.  He has suffered because of this in his fights with Kongo and to a certain extent against Overeem.  He needs to become more familiar with the clinch and use it to his advantage in fights, including using it to avoid takedowns.  However, he is many times giving up a lot of weight in fights which doesn't help his cause.  Which brings me to one to one of my biggest points.

• MOVE TO LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT

Cro Cop comes tips the scales in the 220's in most of his fights, so it would not be an extreme cut by any means.  If Alistar Overeem and Forrest Griffin can make the cut to 205, Mirko should be able to do it without having any major problems.  This would be huge for him because then he would be fighting guys the same size as him or even smaller.  Against the likes of Rampage, Wanderlei Silva, Rich Franklin, ect, I would be very confident in his ability to get back to his winning ways.

• LEARN NOT TO PANIC

When things tend to not go Cro Cop's way, he panics at times and loses confidence mid-fight.  Now this might not be something you can just train out of a person, but it can't hurt to try.  I remember reading that after the Serra fight, Georges St. Pierre saw a sport psychologist to help him out with the mental game.  Mabye something along those lines could help him in the long run.  He needs to learn to remain composed and patient if he wants to keep the fight where he wants it.

As I said, this is coming from a Mirko fan who wants to see him get back on his winning ways.  But the reality of the MMA game is that if you're not evolving, it's going to catch up with you at some point.  None of the things I brought up are that outlandish, but after training the same way for years it may be hard to change things up.  I hope Mirko can have the insight to improve his skillsets and change with the fight game like others have.