His vision was compromised to the point that they really should have stopped it , it’s not like he was going to come back and win n the Crocop fight and then fight Barnett later that evening with one eye
This happened back when MMA fighters were actually tough and before every fan and commentator screamed CTE the second someone gets hit. Wanderlei absolutely would've fought Barnett later that evening with one eye had he beaten Cro Cop. One of the fights that put him on the map was when the ref stopped his fight with Artur Mariano during an IVC tournament, his eye was split open and swollen and Mariano was telling the ref to stop the fight
during the fight, but Wanderlei just kept walking him down looking to take his head off. He was an animal, and while Cro Cop won that fight in the OWGP, Wanderlei got to showcase his legendary toughness once again. Hell, he probably landed his best punch of the whole fight right before he got knocked out. Wanderlei was kill or be killed and I love that PRIDE let that fight go until it had a proper finish, especially considering that the final match was marred by Barnett tapping after Cro Cop's knuckle went into his eye, thereby robbing us of a second LHK or at least a more definitive finish to the tournament.
Wanderlei and Yuki Nakai are the two legendary one-eyed warriors from back when the Just Bleed God reigned supreme.
Na the Wand from their first fight was much better.
I think that it was more that the Cro Cop from their first fight was much worse. Wanderlei was the reigning PRIDE MW champ and a very experienced MMA fighter. Cro Cop was a kickboxer who was fighting his fourth ever MMA fight. And Wand was his first opponent worth a shit coming off of a 20-second, one-strike KO of Yuji Nagata and an embarrassment of a non-fight with Nobuhiko Takada. His only
real MMA fight was against Fujita, but that was like Masvidal's KO of Askren: He just timed a TD, cut him with one knee, and that was that. He had no actual experience fighting a skilled fighter under MMA rules. And even that first fight was fought under special "K-1 versus PRIDE" rules with five 3-minute rounds, time limits for ground action, and an automatic draw ruling if the fight ended without a finish.
The difference in the second fight was that Cro Cop was now himself very experienced and he had phenomenal TDD, so he could strike freely without being worried about getting put on his back, which was the exact opposite of their first fight, where Cro Cop was extremely timid and barely threw anything because he was worried about leaving himself open to a TD.
Fedrigo always had this idiotic idea to make one of his lhw a HW as they did not have one. Worst was Murilo at that but Wanderlei the same. For this tourney they made a science project out of Wand and pumped him full with absurd amounts of roids. He was big but lost his speed and cardio. Easy prey for Crocop. Crocops finals win or Alex Emelianenko was more impressive.
Oh, Ninja just got fat. He didn't add a single ounce of muscle, he just grew a belly and got murked by Kharitonov. Wanderlei, though, was still very fast and very crisp with his strikes, as evidenced by his destruction of Fujita the previous event. He was bigger, sure, but he was still a terrifying striker to have coming at you.
The fight went down exactly how everyone thought it would
Not everyone. I remember being on here at the time and so many people were sure that Wanderlei was going to "expose" Cro Cop, who everyone always talked about as being weak when fighters are aggressive and bully him. Tons of people were sure that Wanderlei would overwhelm Cro Cop, that Cro Cop would shut down, and that Wanderlei would either win a decision the way that Mark Hunt beat Cro Cop the previous year or that he would catch Cro Cop with something and knock him out. Not only did that not happen, but Cro Cop was actually the aggressor and didn't back down an inch, which made the victory that much sweeter.
