I don't disagree. I was there for it, I followed Pride during that time and before. The OWGP was really exciting and I want more of them. Just saying it wasn't as great in comparison (relative competition) as other GPs like the 2004 HW GP or the 2005 LHW GP. That isn't Cro Cop's fault, being a bigger guy in the OWGP is just an advantage. In an OWGP it's crazy possibilities that make it exciting, even though a HW will most likely win.
Respect for being an OG, but... Cro Cop was always not the largest HW. If you watch his fights in K1, and a lot of his fights in general, you could normally see that he was at a size disadvantage. Nowadays, fighters are just generally bigger, but LHWs and hell, even some MWs (because of weight cutting) might cut down to 205 or 185, but come fight time, they probably weigh around what Cro Cop weighed for most of his fights, maybe a little less, but some prob weigh around the same or more.
But more importantly, how could you discredit someone for winning an OWGP as a HW when the field is mostly HWs? That doesn't make sense. If it was an open-weight tourney with a bunch of middleweights, light heavyweights, hell, some welterweights too and heavyweights, then sure, that would be valid to say, a HW obv has the advantage in an open-weight tourney that's truly a mixed bag of weight classes... but let's take a look at the field, shall we?
Josh Barnett - HW
Aleks Emelianenko - HW
Mark Hunt - HW
TK - HW
Fabricio Werdum - HW
Alistair Overeem - HW, although at that time, he was a LHW... it was before he bulked up and became the Overeem we know today, but still, was bigger than Cro Cop even back then.
Big Nog - HW
Zuluzinho - HW
Do I even need to go on? The only non-HWs were Minowa, who was used to fighting bigger guys and perfect for any open-weight tournament, and Nishijima, who was a boxer who boxed at cruiserweight... which would be around LHW for MMA standards. Wanderlei entered the tourney when Fedor dropped out, which made it a total of 3 'questionable' non-HW fighters in the tourney. He bulked up though and ended up weighing more than Cro Cop for their fight. He weighed 20lbs less than Fujita (another HW) in their fight in the bracket, still won.
Murilo Ninja was a MW/LHW and he was in the bracket for Fedor's 2004 Grand Prix win. Also had guys like Giant Silva and Sentoryu Miller, who straight up were horrible fighters. And worst of all, he was supposed to fight Big Nog in the semi-finals of the tourney. The way the bracket was set up had Fedor vs. Big Nog and Sergei Kharitonov vs. Naoya Ogawa as the semi-final fights. But during the final four, they switched the bracket up. Fedor never finished Big Nog, so he would have been at a big disadvantage if he had to fight Sergei in the finals, who likely would have made easy work of Ogawa. Is that not a huge break that he got? Easy to say oh Fedor's amazing, doesn't really matter who was in front of him, he would have won anyway... but he didn't have to beat 2 fighters in one night either because of the NC in the finals/fight having to be rescheduled. On top of that, the bracket got switched, which gave him a much easier fight than he would (and should) have had. I wouldn't even bring it up if Ogawa was just in his bracket to begin with because he'd just be fighting who was in front of him, but that wasn't the case.
So yeah, the point is you could nitpick every little thing about the other Grand Prixs as well, but to make the thing you mention be that he won an OWGP as a HW when the field was pretty much all HWs..... come on.
Talk about how he had an easier bracket in comparison to Barnett. That would be more valid, and that would be the nitpicky thing I'd say about his Grand Prix win, but PRIDE was trying to set up a Fedor/Cro Cop rematch and put them on the same side of the bracket. Fedor dropped out of the tourney. Again, not Cro Cop's fault. I'll admit that Barnett's path was a lot tougher, no one can really dispute that. But it is what it is, it played out how it played out, with Fedor dropping out and whatnot. I'm just saying though. Hispect the legend.
