Scaled-Up ‘Skyscraper’ Ready to ‘Decapitate’ McCorkle

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American fans know Stefan Struve as a talented up-and-comer in the UFC heavyweight division. According to the towering Dutchman, some members of his home country’s government have an entirely different view.

“They think kickboxing and MMA events are opportunities for criminals to get together and talk over stuff,” Struve says. “In Holland, they don’t see me as a sportsman, the government. They see me more as a criminal, if you look at it that way. That’s bulls--t.”

“In the Netherlands, you can open a coffee shop [hash bar] and you can have coke in your pocket and not be arrested, but MMA and kickboxing could get you arrested.”

It’s no exaggeration: Amsterdam police have reportedly already begun cracking down on fight events, and if politicians like Mayor Lodewijk Asscher have their ways, mixed martial arts, muay Thai and all combat sports except boxing may soon be outlawed in Holland’s capital city.

Luckily for Struve, training MMA in the Netherlands remains perfectly legal, and that’s precisely what the 6-foot-11-inch “Skyscraper” has been doing for the past 14 straight weeks. His focus: Sean McCorkle, whom he meets on the main card of Saturday’s UFC 124 at the Bell Centre in Montreal.

“For training, we didn’t change a lot. We mostly did what we normally do,” says the student of “Dirty” Bob Schreiber. “I’ve been training a lot with K-1 strikers like [Jerome] Le Banner and [Hesdy] Gerges.”

One change Struve did make in preparation for the fight will show the day before, when the fighter hits the scale.

“I’ve changed some things in my diet and I went up to 255, and I feel really good,” says Struve, who’s weighed in between 240 and 248 pounds for each of his six previous UFC bouts.

Only 22 years old and already with five-plus years of pro MMA experience, Struve has gone 4-2 in those six Octagon fights, his only UFC losses coming to top-shelf heavyweights Junior dos Santos and Roy Nelson. Struve’s popularity seems to grow after each outing, as fans are drawn in not only by the fighter’s colossal frame, but also his reputation for exciting, often-bloody scraps.

A perfect example came at August’s UFC 117, in Struve’s most recent bout. After being thoroughly dominated and having his lower lip inflated by Christian Morecraft in the first round, Struve stormed back to knock out Morecraft in dramatic fashion just 22 seconds into the next frame. That win netted him the evening’s “Knockout of the Night,” putting Struve in a rare group with those who have won both that bonus and “Submission of the Night,” which he took home with a triangle-choking of Chase Gormley at UFC 104.

While Struve has dealt with a stylistically diverse range of opponents in his career, McCorkle has presented one unique challenge -- moreso outside of the cage than in. A notorious trash talker and online provocateur, McCorkle lobbed insults at Struve via Twitter (“Stefan Struve pees sitting down,” read one of the tamer one-liners) and was somewhat successful in baiting his foe into a war of words. Struve has played along, albeit seemingly reluctantly, outsourcing a Photoshop contest for fans to deface McCorkle’s picture.

Mostly, Struve just seems unfazed, both by the Internet antics and his lesser-known opponent’s credentials.

“When I saw that [Mark] Hunt was fighting him in his first fight, I went and looked him up and immediately said, ‘I’m not impressed with this guy,’ His record’s good, 10-and-0, but if you look at the guys he’s fought, he hasn’t fought anybody. You can get to 14, 15-and-0 fighting those guys, but it doesn’t mean anything to me,” says Struve. “Before I got to the UFC, in my opinion, I was fighting the best heavyweights in Europe.”

Saturday night, both men will have the chance to back up their chatter. No need to ask Struve for a prediction on what will happen -- the rules of his Photoshop contest say it all.

“Send me your best Photoshop of big b-tch McCorkle! Winner will get my UFC gloves I use to decapitate him!”