In Summer 2005, it wasn’t only the MMA world that was buzzing about the biggest heavyweight fight of all time between PRIDE heavyweight champion Fedor Emelianenko and Mirko “Cro Cop” Filipovic.
Somewhere at the University of Colorado, Brendan Schaub was preparing for his senior year as a fullback on the Buffaloes football team and was equally as excited. Wearing his Cro Cop signature shirt, Schaub convinced his friends to chip in to buy the show, PRIDE Final Conflict 2005, on pay-per-view.
Now, nearly six years later, Schaub has shifted careers and is a rising mixed martial artist who is getting the call to fight Cro Cop this Saturday at UFC 128 in Newark, N.J.
“When Cro Cop was kicking ass and taking names is when I was really just getting into mixed martial arts, 2005, 2006,” Schaub said earlier this month on Bloody Elbow Radio. “For me, he was the guy I looked up to.
“In this sport you don’t get a lot of chances to fight legends. I’ve got the chance. I consider (Gabriel) Gonzaga a legend and I see Cro Cop as a different level than that. I’m just so stoked for the opportunity.”
Schaub has won three straight fights, including beating Gonzaga in October at UFC 121. For this fight, he went through a bit of an opponent carousel. He called out Frank Mir but was instead given Stefan Struve in a headlining position on the last UFC on Versus show. That all changed quickly, though.
“I wasn’t thrilled about that fight,” Schaub said. “You go from Gabriel Gonzaga to Struve, nothing against Struve. I was like, ‘OK, cool,’ and my coach put on some slilts and I hit mitts with him and then literally four hours go by and my agent’s like, ‘Seriously, I’m done messing with you. They changed your opponent again.'”
After some joking that he’d again drawn Chris Tuchscherer, his opponent was finally revealed to him: Cro Cop.
“I didn’t know what to do so I just started running around the gym with my shirt over my head,” Schaub said. “That’s how it happened.”
Now, with a 12-week training camp under his belt (“If I’m not overtrained, then I’m not doing something right,” Schaub says of the long camp), Schaub is ready to go against the 2006 PRIDE Openweight Grand Prix champion.
Although he greatly respects Cro Cop, Schaub isn’t going to go into the fight and allow that respect to get in the way of picking up a win like Pat Barry did against Cro Cop at UFC 115.
“The big difference between me and the rest of the guys he’s fought is I respect the guy, but the way I show my respect is by punching these guys square in the mouth,” Schaub said. “Dana White and Joe Silva know that and there’s a reason I got this fight.
“I go in there and I take care of business. I’m pretty ferocious in the Octagon. The last couple guys he’s fought, the way they showed their respect, I think, is kind of going in there and half-assing it. That’s not what I’m going to do at all.”
Despite Cro Cop’s recent setback to Mir and his struggles against Barry and Junior dos Santos, Schaub isn’t expecting anything other than a classic Cro Cop performance when the two square off at Prudential Center on Saturday.
“I expect the best Cro Cop we’ve seen in the UFC,” Schaub said. “He’s fought some of the toughest guys in the world, so him fighting me is nothing different. Obviously he’s not going to be scared. At the same time, he knows he has to train his ass off to beat me. The tape I watch is the old school Cro Cop, throwing crazy kicks, crazy left hands and that’s what I’ve been training for and that’s what I expect.”
You can listen to the entire interview with Brendan Schaub by listening to the March 3 edition of Bloody Elbow Radio. Bloody Elbow Radio is live each Tuesday and Thursday at 4 p.m. ET with live shows immediately following major MMA events.