Cro Cop says ground-and-pound looks brutal, 'not a good image for the sport'

Mirko "Cro Cop" Filipovic has made a career out of brutally kicking people in the head.

The legendary PRIDE heavyweight, and the former bread and butter of K-1 kickboxing, has always favored the standup game - something that's expected from a man who once described his vaunted kicks as, "right leg, hospital; left leg, cemetery."

Unsurprisingly, "Cro Cop" isn't a fan of ground fighting, and in an interview with The Telegraph's Gareth A. Davies, the Croatian revealed his distaste for when fighters unleash a torrent of strikes on a downed opponent.

I don't like ground-and-pound too much. I do it in a fight, of course, but it looks brutal.

It's not a good image for the sport. Something should be changed in MMA - the rules should be changed a little bit. Fighting on the ground should be restricted because sometimes it looks really brutal.

I think elbows should be forbidden because they cause a lot of blood. Many people don't want to see blood. They want to see skill, art. They want to see good kicking, punching, submissions, not blood.

It's interesting that a man who can unleash such fury with his shins could feel so strongly about the brutality of ground-and-pound.

You know, a man that can do this: