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28/12/10 - CroCop vs Schaub at UFC 128Mirko ‘CroCop’ Filipovic and Brendan Schaub are set to meet on March 19th, Fighters Only can exclusively reveal.
The fight will take place at UFC 128 in the Prudential Center, Newark, New Jersey and will air on the evening’s PPV main card.
News of the fight comes from a source very close to the bout. Verbal agreements are in place and paperwork is expected to be finalised soon.
Schaub told Fighters Only recently that he would like to test himself against big names of the sport and referenced Mirko CroCop as one of the people he would like to face. Now he has his chance.
It had been reported that Schaub was to face Frank Mir, then Stefan Struve, but neither of those matches were contracted and have now been scrapped.
For CroCop it will be his first outing since suffering a KO loss to Frank Mir at UFC 119. He took the fight on five weeks notice and was stopped late in the third round.
CroCop has been the subject of much retirement speculation for some time but he has two fights left on his UFC deal - of which the Schaub fight will be one - and is not intending to hang the gloves up yet.
He told Fighters Only recently that since training with Ivan Hippolyte he has finally achieved the kind of cardiovascular fitness that eluded him earlier in his career.
CroCop has also been undertaking various rehabilitative therapies towards repairing his knees and back, which have been damaged from years of training.
His right knee has been particularly troublesome and made it difficult for him to kick, but a video released last week by Croatian news shows him training and stretching in ways that have been difficult for him until now.
In the video CroCop claimed to be feeling fitter than ever and said that 2011 would be his best year since 2006, which was the year he won the PRIDE FC Open Weight Grand Prix.
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