Was cro cop the perfect heavyweight?

I think there are two kinds of '' perfect '' fighters.

Fighters who look like absolute monsters for a short range of time and fighters who are so experienced that they have an incredible longitivity at high level, despite the losses.

Cain, JDS, Jones, and probably Ngannou will never ever pretend to stay at high level and win for two decades like legendary fighters like Mirko or Aerts in kickboxing.
 
he would have been lhw goat if he cut weight

15 pounds is a small weightcut these days
 
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187 lbs

This dates from about a year into his MMA career where he was not even training full time as he was still most focused on K-1 at that point.

Just look at the two Wanderlei fights to see the difference between 2002 Crocop and 2006 Crocop in terms of takedown defence.
 
He loses to Cain and any other wrestler.


Nah prime Mirko stuffs the takedown and makes it a standup fight. Not a good deal for anyone. People don’t realize how many fights Mirko has been in. Between amateur boxing, kickboxing and MMA he has over 140 fights. He is a warrior! I’m 0-4 in street fights and it has aged me 20 years. I cannot imaging getting into 140 fights.
 
Prime Fedor was perfect other than his size. Good everywhere explosive and didnt lose for 10 years at frekken HW which is like impossible since they can all take you out with one shot.
 
Im a huge Cro Cop fan but objectively no.



*Perfect physique for hw
*extremely fast for hw
*good boxing with ko power in both hand
*great striking defense * footwork
*got some of the kicks in mma history + hardest kicker
*best Tdd in mma history,literally no one can take him down.
*and good chin
Prime Cro cop would beat any hw in mma not name fedor
 
Nah prime Mirko stuffs the takedown and makes it a standup fight. Not a good deal for anyone. People don’t realize how many fights Mirko has been in. Between amateur boxing, kickboxing and MMA he has over 140 fights. He is a warrior! I’m 0-4 in street fights and it has aged me 20 years. I cannot imaging getting into 140 fights.

Look at the way Cain walked into straight shots from Kongo and Werdum then imagine far more power and like the latter no easy takedeown escape.

He wasn't impossible to take down but it was very hard to just power though him plus actually on the ground he had a very strong defence, it was only his unfailrity with elbows vs Gonzaga when when he was already badly hurt by Randleman that exposed him, he was able to last 5 mins against Fedor's GnP attack as those big legs(and training with Werdum) made for a superb defensive guard.

I wouldn't say he was physical ideal for HW as someone like Arlovski with a bit more size and the same speed probably had better "raw materials" BUT he was very well suited for being a smaller HW with good defence and a lot of power. A lot of good LHW's would IMHO suffer from fighting at HW as they depend too much on "take a shot to land a shot" or just workrate to win fights.
 
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CroCop was very uneven in his UFC martial times, which could be attributed to any number of factors: age / health / not being used to the cage / being subject to “random” drug testing. I know his star shone brightest in Pride, and I respect his contribution to the sport. However, it’s hard for me to consider him a perfect heavyweight.
 
Look at the way Cain walked into straight shots from Kongo and Werdum then imagine far more power and like the latter no easy takedeown escape.

He wasn't impossible to take down but it was very hard to just power though him plus actually on the ground he had a very strong defence, it was only his unfailrity with elbows vs Gonzaga when when he was already badly hurt by Randleman that exposed him, he was able to last 5 mins against Fedor's GnP attack.



I wish we could have seen prime CC with these guys. He was so much fun to watch. He could end a fight quickly. Gonzaga 1 killed me but the second fight he showed vicious ground and pound. Mirko is my favorite fighter.
 
cc was stubborn and kind of arrogant. didn't take training seriously and refused to train w/other fighters or camps. this guy did pretty good for hitting the heavybag in his basement when he fought in the ufc
 
*Perfect physique for hw
*extremely fast for hw
*good boxing with ko power in both hand
*great striking defense * footwork
*got some of the kicks in mma history + hardest kicker
*best Tdd in mma history,literally no one can take him down.
*and good chin
Prime Cro cop would beat any hw in mma not name fedor

I think so. He really hurt himself by putting on that extra weight when he made the move to the UFC. He completely lost the flow that he previously had. He became hesitant and slow.
 
He sure is one of the greatest HWs ever. I don't see any of the current guys beating him in his best years, but that is always hard to say.

However, I think someone like Fedor was the perfec HW.
We rarely see world class grapplers that also develops great, unpreditible striking, and has the speed of someone from a lighter division. When also several opponents claim he was the hardest hitter in MMA, you have a pretty good candidate.

...Something like Khabib and Conors love child would look like.
 
CroCop was very uneven in his UFC martial times, which could be attributed to any number of factors: age / health / not being used to the cage / being subject to “random” drug testing. I know his star shone brightest in Pride, and I respect his contribution to the sport. However, it’s hard for me to consider him a perfect heavyweight.

The ironic thing is Crocop during his second UFC run was actually carrying more muscle than he did in Pride. Personally I tend to think that back then PED use was actually LESS common but with a few extreme cases(who were mostly American) and its actually post Pride that we saw more of a size arms race developing. The same happened in K-1 as well I'd say were Reem sparked a period of seemingly everyone getting much larger in a year or two.
 
*Perfect physique for hw
*extremely fast for hw
*good boxing with ko power in both hand
*great striking defense * footwork
*got some of the kicks in mma history + hardest kicker
*best Tdd in mma history,literally no one can take him down.
*and good chin
Prime Cro cop would beat any hw in mma not name fedor
Prime crocop loses to Cain, jds and overeem.

And Gonzaga
 
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