Mirko Cro Cop Beats Hong Man Choi, Says He Needs 6 Months Off, Returning to UFC?

Mirko "Cro Cop" Filipovic defeated the 7-foot Korean kickboxer Hong Man Choi in an MMA match today at the K-1 Dynamite show in Japan, and now it's time to start looking toward Cro Cop's future.

For starters, Cro Cop confirmed after the fight (via Sherdog) that he needs knee surgery and will be off for the next six months. So we won't be seeing him in the first half of 2009.

But where will we be seeing him beyond that? There's been a lot of speculation that he might return to the UFC, which dropped him after he lost back-to-back fights to Gabriel Gonzaga and Cheick Kongo. I have no inside information about whether that's close to happening, but I'd be in favor of it. Although the 34-year-old Cro Cop isn't the same fighter he was a few years ago, he could still provide a stern test to the UFC's younger generation of heavyweights. If he's willing to come back with the understanding that he's not close to a title shot, I'd love to see Cro Cop back in the Octagon.