So lets play a little game of "What if... Sports Edition"

What if Fedor was the one to come to the UFC immediately after pride closed down and what if CroCop was the one to stay in Japan beating up cans?? How different would our view of the 2 fighters be and would Mirko's name now be the name mentioned when talking about THE all time great??

Granted Fedor would always have the win over CC in 05 but since then CroCop had put together a very impressive run winning the open weight grand prix, taking out Josh Barnett and Wanderlei Silva in the same night. We will never know what a 2007 Fedor would do against Gabriel Gonzaga but I do not think it would end up well for Fedor. Looking down Mirko's career path I see some interesting matchups (kongo, overeem), some wins (perosh, hong man, al turk) and some BRUTAL losses (Dos Santos, Mir, again Overeem, even Schaub + Nelson)... nothing that makes me think he would have been able to continue the mythical dominance he enjoyed in strikeforce.

On the other hand I can much clearly picture what would happen if a 2007 CC took on Hong man Choi, Tim Sylvia, and Andrei Arlovski all right in a row... right foot hospital, left kick cemetary. I think its reasonably safe to say that CCs run through the hot garbage Fedor faced would last equally as long with my only (prominent) question mark being the results vs Brett Rogers in 09.

Now here is the question... we can only imagine the highlight reel Crocop would have amassed running through that low end competition. Would that be enough to elevate him over his previous loss to Fedor and into the (fraudulent) top 5 p4p spot fedor know sits in??