Of course. #3 heavyweight of all-time, one of the best strikers ever in MMA, some excellent wins and some sensational performances. Without question yes.
shame to see how far he fell when he went to the UFC. watching Gonzaga knock him out was pretty sad (and disturbing, seeing his foot)
Yes of course. He dominated opponents in an era that was well behind todays standard, nevertheless he was winning impressively just like Fedor.
No. The guy's best wins are Fujita, Saku (MW), Herring, Vovchanchyn, Aleks, Barnett 3x, Coleman, Randleman (possible work), and Wand (205er). Barnett and Aleks are the only impressive HWs on that list so I don't see the justification for calling him an ATG.
You've just re-iterated why he is an ATG fighter there. Cheers. Wins over top guys like Barnett, Aleks Emelianenko, Coleman, Vovchanchyn etc ensure that Crocop has one of the strongest hw win resumes of his era, and add in to that the superb striking ability he displayed in his prime.
He came from an era and group of fighters who actually fought each other and forged the best legacies to date - Fedor, Nog, CC and Barnett. New guys will come and replace them but to date these guys generally beat everyone outside of each others company.
Of his era, an era that proliferated with one-dimensional subpar fighters. Why in the **** are we talking about ATG status anyway when the sport is less than twenty years-old? Now, don't get offended when I say this because it's merely opinion, but you and a lot of others on this board have a romantic/nostalgic view on that era of the sport which just really wasn't that good. Was it entertaining? Hell yes, I'd never seen anything like all of that before when I first got into MMA but as someone who has been watching it for a very long time I have to say that the current fighters are, for the most part at least, superior to the guys of the late nineties and early oughts. The generation that you all cling to as the "Golden Age of MMA" is going to be equivalent to the John L. Sullivan and Gentleman Jim-era of boxing in about another fifteen years. The early nineties were like the bareknuckle days, late nineties early oughts the beginnings of the Marquess of Queensberry Rules, and '03-present as the beginning of the Golden Age. Those guys that Mirko feasted on, with the exception of Aleks and Barnett, were hold overs from the prior generation and I can't see how you could say that a guy who never held a major title and won a GP title by beating up 205ers and a guy that he'd already demolished before can be an all-time great. I'm not in favor of evaluating anyone's legacy like that so early on in the sport's history but unless the guy held championship hardware, he's out of consideration for me.
You would go as far as saying 1 - Fedor 2 - Nog 3 - CC 4 - Barnett Their body of work plus the fact they fought each other at their best and beat pretty much everyone else sees them comfortably ahead. Mir, Arlovski, Sylvia, even Couture etc were no match for those guys at their best.