Mirko "Cro Cop" Filipovic not a big fan of cages

Mirko "Cro Cop" Filipovic was surprisingly open during a pre-fight media session and talked about how the differences of fighting in Japan and the U.S. affected him (video after the jump). Here's a hint, the cage didn't help:

"It was a bad time for me," Filipovic said of when he joined the UFC. "I was sick of everything, of training. I'd just won the Grand Prix in PRIDE. To tell you the truth, the money attracted me here. The money attracted me because I knew PRIDE was going to be finished. But that is the worst motivation, to fight only for money.

"I trained some, but not the way I should have. Then, I underestimated the phenomenon called the cage. It's a huge difference in your career. The cage is twice bigger than the ring; there are no ropes. It's different rules. It was a shock for me. "It's also a different kind of public. That was a shock for me. In Japan when you're fighting, you feel like you're in Vienna at a concert listening to some opera. Everybody's quiet. They keep quiet. When you do some moves, they go, ‘Ooooh.' Here, people are screaming and this and that. It's a different mentality. All those things are small, but put them together and it was a big thing for me."

Filipovic has never been thrilled with doing press and Kevin Iole's entire pre-fight story is definitely worth a read.

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