PRIDE Total Elimination 2004:

Holy shit; CroCop just got knocked into next week by Kevin Randleman! What the hell is the world coming to? It looks to me that Randleman couldn’t give a rat’s ass about CroCop’s fierce striking ability, looked the Croatian killing machine dead in his eye and quickly relished in arguably the biggest win of his career. I said going into the Grand Prix that Randleman was the dark horse and if anybody can score a major upset, it was him. I just didn’t think he’d do it against CroCop in the manner that he did. Mad props to “The Monster” on a brilliant left hook and successive hammer strikes. CroCop never expected it and was iced in less than two minutes.

Now that CroCop is out of the Grand Prix picture, it’s down to both Minotauro Nogueira and Fedor Emelianenko. It was shocking that 1.) Mark Coleman was submitted so easily and 2.) that Fedor’s rolling armbar was as picturesque as it was. It is me or did Fedor look like a blown-up Rumina Sato circa 1999? It took Nogueira longer than most expected, but he eventually submitted Hirotaka Yokoi with a slick spinning front choke. Call me boring and stale, but there is no way that Nogueira will not meet Fedor in the finals. Forget everybody else.

Murilo Rua had to gain a few dozen pounds in order to partake in the PRIDE extravaganza. From the look of things, it appears as though he had gorged himself on Pulaski Bakery doughnuts. He was a tad too flabby and those punches he was winging at Sergei Kharitonov looked amateurish. I don’t know what truly happened in there, but he didn’t fight as smoothly as he normally does. But Kharitonov, man, those are some lethal fists he possesses! Kharitonov won’t win the GP, but he will assuredly make some noise afterward.