mma / News

Muhammed Lawal Doesn’t Regret Fighting Cro-Cop Right After Satoshi Ishii

January 23, 2017 | Posted by Jeremy Thomas

Muhammed Lawal spoke with MMAjunkie about his recent fights with Satoshi Ishii at Bellator 169 and Mirko “Cro Cop” Filipovic at Rizin FF Grand Prix Open Weight 2016. Some highlights are below:

On fighting Cro Cop so close after Satoshi Ishii and losing: “I fought with a torn ACL most of my career. Most of my fights, probably I had a torn ACL just about. I could feel the weakness, but I couldn’t feel the pain. When it’s time to fight, all doubts, all injuries just go away. You have no time to think about that. So when it’s time to fight, jet lag, there’s no excuses, man. I knew what I was getting myself into. I chose to do it. As a matter of fact, I wanted to fight ‘Cro Cop.’ At one point, they were going to try to re-draw the brackets, I think, and I was like, ‘No, I want to fight ‘Cro Cop.” Why not? I’m a fighter. This is how I get paid, and I want to go out there and knock him out. I wanted to knock his ass out. But he got me instead.”

On his loss to Cro Cop: “I trained for Ishii for about a month and a half. So I trained hard for Ishii to avoid the clinch. The main thing, whenever I was training, we’d spar, Steve Mocco would grab me, and people would just grab me, my thing was just to disengage the clinch. So I spent so much time disengaging the clinch, that when I fought ‘Cro Cop,’ I disengaged when I should have engaged in the clinch. That was my mistake. I should’ve made that adjustment on the fly. I’m a professional, I’m a vet now, so I should have known better. And two, I didn’t realize how stiff those ropes were. Because what Cro Cop was doing is – when I’d shoot, and get in deep, he would back up, and use momentum to bounce off the ropes and throw double under hooks to lift me up and back me up. So, he was smart, he had a great gameplan as well, but really, I should have won.”

On if he’d fight Cro Cop again if he un-retired: “Hell yeah, I’d fight him tomorrow. Look, I don’t care – it could be Hong Man Choi, it could be whomever. If there’s an opportunity for me to fight and get paid and challenge myself, I’m definitely going to do it. This is a dream. Any time you’re doing something that you enjoy doing and you’re getting paid for it, it’s the dream. It’s the American dream. So hell yeah, I would. I would fight ‘Cro Crop’ every day of the week if I could. I’m a fighter, it’s what we do.”