MMA legend and UFC alum Mirko Cro Cop said that he was offered a chance to fight Francis Ngannou in May, though he didn’t confirm the offer got here from MVP.
Ngannou will likely be fighting Philipe Lins within the co-main event of the MVP MMA card on May 16, which will likely be headlined by Ronda Rousey versus Gina Carano and stream on Netflix. There had also been talks of a fight between Ngannou and Rico Verhoeven, but Verhoeven will as a substitute fight Oleksandr Usyk in boxing for the WBC Heavyweight title on May 23.
Cro Cop said in an interview with “RMC Sport Combat” that he had been approached to fight Ngannou as well, and on the age of 51, retired as of 2019 having suffered a stroke, he laughed and couldn’t take it serious. He said that he was approached by a “serious guy” who’s the “CEO of 1 big organization.”
“I said, ‘What do you mean, did you say fight? Did you employ the word fight or did you employ the word playing cards, chess, swimming, running? You mean fight?’ … I began laughing,” he said. “If I needed to fight now and so they said make me an inventory from the worst to one of the best that you’ll fight, in fact Francis Ngannou will likely be the last one which I fight.”
Cro Cop jokingly said he would have asked for $500,000 for himself and $19.5 million to offer to his mother for the expression on her face when he tells her about it. He said that the fight would have been at too in need of notice in May anyway, and he didn’t understand why a lot money was being thrown about.