Report: CroCop claims USADA offered him a deal to turn snitch

On the surface this story seems outright shady, if not at least somewhat hard to fathom. RTL site Vijesti reports that Mirko “CroCop” Filipovic could have had his UFC suspension rescinded if he had been willing to snitch on other fighters to USADA. As most fans will remember, back in November of 2015, Mirko CroCop (only just recently having returned to the UFC from more than three years of fighting on the regional MMA circuit) was suspended from UFC competition for two years by USADA for self reporting his use of hGH.

The move immediately prompted CroCop’s now-short-lived retirement, seeming to take the remaining wind out of the 40-year-old fighter’s competitive spirit. However, in a recent video interview with RTL site Vijesti, CroCop went into further detail about how the suspension unfolded and how, had he been willing, he could have continued his UFC career.

Ina Ferencic, a writer for Croation website ProFightStore.hr, translated CroCop’s interview into English. Bloody Elbow was able to reasonably verify the bulk of her transcript with the original RTL article using Google Translate, but she appears to cover some sections that the article skipped and that we were thus unable to verify.

Apparently CroCop explained that while he didn’t ask for medical clearance from USADA before undergoing treatment on his shoulder, he contacted the UFC shortly afterward to notify them of the procedure and to make sure that he wouldn’t be in violation of the rules. As CroCop seems to outline it, he was told that he needed to send an email to the UFC, showing his treatment, but that “there would be no problem.”

After that, in his own words, “Then USADA called me and they told me my confession is commendable act. I didn’t understand anything. My e-mail was forwarded to USADA and they used it as my confession. They gave me 2 year suspension because I was ‘fair’. They …

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