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From the way Dana White and Mirko Crocop were selling his fight with Mostafa Al-Turk at UFC 99 this past weekend, you might have thought it was the beginning of another UFC run for the famous Croatian striker. But instead, fans who anticipated a steady stream of great battles against foes like Randy Couture and Antonio Minotauro Nogueira will have to settle for whatever Japan can scrounge up, because Mirko Crocop will not be fighting for the UFC again any time soon.

Mirko Crocop visits a children’s hospital with Jean Claude Van Damme - Image: Zuma Press

The reason why is slightly complicated. There are two sides to every story: Dana White’s involves a long angry slew of swear words, and Mirko’s involves contractual minutia. But the long story short version goes like this: Dana claims Mirko Crocop agreed verbally to a three fight deal if he won his fight this past weekend. Mirko claims the deal he was offered had the 36 year old fighting once every six months and had no clause for a title shot even if he won all his fights.

I’m sure there’s a bunch of small things on both sides that change to story one way or another but here’s the solid results: Dana White is extremely pissed off with Mirko and Mirko will be returning to a Japanese ring as soon as July 20th. That’s if Dana doesn’t decide to try and sue the checkered tights off him first.

There’s a saying that verbal agreements aren’t worth the paper they’re written on, but there are actually quite a few laws regarding oral agreements. Because Crocop is basically contesting the terms of the deal and not just turning it down outright, I doubt the UFC would win any lawsuit they launched. But as we saw in the case of Randy Couture, sometimes the UFC wins just by making escape a gigantic expensive legal pain in the ass.