Cro Cop se neće boriti na staru godinu, otkrivamo zbog čega! https://t.co/XLrGtCjgo4
— Večernji list (@vecernji_list) November 29, 2018
In an interview with Croatian newspaper Vecernji List on Thursday, Mirko “Cro Cop” Filipovic stated that he would not be appearing on Rizin FF 14’s New Year’s Eve card in Japan due to budgetary reasons. Among the topics discussed in his interview was that the cost of bringing Floyd Mayweather to compete at Rizin Fighting Federation was so high, they were reportedly unable to bring in many other high-salaried fighters, including himself.
A translated excerpt of the interview reads: “Yes, this year I will not fight at Rizin’s New Year’s Eve [event]. Rizin decided to bring the famous boxer Floyd Mayweather to perform an exhibition match with Tenshin Nasukawa, and considering that Floyd was the most expensive athlete of the day, he himself exhausted Rizin’s budget by not calling any of the foreign fighters, but the rest of the event was filled with Japanese fighters.”
“Cro Cop” last competed at Rizin FF 13 this past September, earning a first round TKO due to a doctor stoppage against Roque Martinez. The 2006 Pride openweight Grand Prix and 2016 Rizin openweight Grand Prix champion, “Cro Cop” is just one of two fighters to compete in Rizin at least five times and win each bout, along with Kyoji Horiguchi, whose sole Rizin loss was a kickboxing match.
He did assure the fans that he would compete again, stating “I’ll be in the first half of next year, and I’ll post details when everything is formalized.”
Rizin FF 14 will take place on Dec. 31 at the Saitama Super Arena near Tokyo. The event will be headlined by an exhibition boxing match between Mayweather and Nasukawa, and will also feature a bantamweight championship matchup between Horiguchi and Bellator MMA bantamweight king Darrion Caldwell.