Scott Coker Doesn’t Understand Those Taking Issue With Cro Cop Fighting Whilst Under A USADA Ban
Just over a week ago, Bellator MMA announced that Mirko “Cro Cop” Filipovic had signed for the promotion and would be fighting on their upcoming Bellator 200 fight card taking place in London on May 25.
Whilst most were excited about the return of the Croatian legend, others in the MMA community pointed out that Cro Cop had never finished the two year ban retroactive ban handed to him by USADA whilst signed to the UFC.
Cro Cop’s two year ban was retroactive to Nov. 9, 2015, but on July 20, 2016, his contract with the UFC was terminated, thus he never served out his ban.
Since leaving the UFC, Cro Cop has since fought five times under the RIZIN promotional banner in Japan where the drug testing policy isn’t public knowledge. Regardless, since the announcement of Cro Cop signing for Bellator, the question has been asked whether the promotion should be respecting the ban that he was issued by USADA.
This past weekend, Bellator CEO Scott Coker spoke to MMANytt.com about the controversy and said he wasn’t aware of Cro Cop’s ban when they signed him.
“Look, Mirko fights in RIZIN in Japan and USADA has a relationship with the UFC and they have the whole time.
Why didn’t they go after them two years ago when he fought for RIZIN? Why is this a question? Is this just popping up because he’s fighting for Bellator at our two hundredth event?
“If you wanted to take action, you should’ve taken action a long time ago.
“When we booked him we didn’t even know there were going to be any issues. He’s already fighting so we thought he was going to be able to fight.”
Coker then went on to reinforce the point that if people felt so strongly about Cro Cop fighting whilst under a ban from USADA, they should’ve taken a stronger stance when he fought in Japan for RIZIN.
“Listen, USADA works with the UFC, they’re doing their own thing, so good for them, go do it.
“I just feel like the timing of it is, you know, it’s little bit questionable.”
“At the end of the day, if you really wanted to enforce it, you should’ve enforced it two years ago when Mirko fought in Japan.”
Watch the full interview:
