Should Mirko Cro Cop retire?

It was supposed to be his comeback fight, a performance on par with his peer Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira’s win over Randy Couture. But instead, Mirko Cro Cop turned in a performance that has even his most loyal supporters questioning whether or not it’s time for him to hang it up.

Cro Cop basically was forced to say the equivalent “no mas” after eating a devastating knee from fellow UFC heavyweight contender Junior dos Santos in his loss at UFC 103 on Saturday, complaining of vision problems.

He had fought a fairly competitive fight up until that round, but at the same time, the Croatian didn’t look anything like his old dominant self when he fought with PRIDE in Japan and was one of the most feared strikers on the planet.

His former top-tier K1-style striking skills looked extremely rusty on the night as Cro Cop mostly sat back and waited to counter dos Santo’s strikes.

When dos Santos got close, Cro Cop clinched and/or pushed him away over and over again, seemingly afraid to trade with the explosive Brazilian boxing specialist.

His trademark left high kick came out about as slow as we’ve ever seen it before and didn’t come close to landing once.

While Cro Cop managed to hang in with a top contender, it never seemed as though he had a chance to pull out the win.

Cro Cop was a slight underdog going in and there’s no shame to losing to dos Santos, but now, it’s hard to foresee a scenario in which Cro Cop can make a run at the title. And for a prideful guy like Cro Cop, that probably won’t sit well with him.

At the end of the fight, he looked like his heart wasn’t in it. He seemed tired of trying to duck and dodge away from dos Santos’ onslaughts just for the chance to get one counter shot in, and he seemed to realize he was in over his head against the his younger, quicker opponent.

It’s never an easy thing for an all-time great to admit he doesn’t have it anymore, but it seemed like that epiphany hit Cro Cop right around the third round, leading to the verbal submission that put the brakes on what could have been a classic UFC fight ending.

Even Dana White, who seemingly had Cro Cop on a title shot fast-track, seemed to sense that the end was near.

“I’m not saying that I’ve ever been at the level of a Mirko ‘Cro Cop’ or any of these guys, but I used to fight,” said White to MMAJunkie. “You get to a certain age where you remember what you used to be able to do, and you can see all the openings. You just can’t pull the trigger. I think that’s where he’s at.”

And quite frankly, that’s a perfect description of what Cro Cop went through on Saturday night. It’s the same thing that happened to Chuck Liddell, it just happened a few years earlier to Cro Cop, who’s been in wars with punishing fighters like Fedor Emelianenko, Nogueira, Gabriel Gonzaga, and more.

Cro Cop might want a better ending to his career and could very well stick around to blast someone in the side of the head with a high kick for old time’s sake, and that would be a fitting end to his brilliant career.

But at UFC 103, the message was loud and clear: his days as a title contender are over, which is no shame because it happens to the best of them at some point.