Mauricio"Shogun" Rua, who became one of the biggest names in the sport in 2005 when he went 5-0 and won Pride's middleweight grand prix, retired following a loss to Ihor Potieria at UFC 283 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He went out with a 27-14-1 record, won the UFC light heavyweight title and had the Pride grand prix tournament win.
Emelianenko never fought in the UFC which, around 2006 became the world's leading MMA promotion, so he missed a lot of the great fighters like Randy Couture, Cain Velasquez, Stipe Miocic, Daniel Cormier, Francis Ngannou, Junior dos Santos and others. Though he was scheduled to fight Josh Barnett several times, those two didn't meet, either.
Asked if he believed Emelianenko deserved to be considered one of the Top 5 or Top 10 MMA heavyweights of all time, Cormier, a UFC Hall of Famer and ex-heavyweight champion, said,"He is for sure. Not the GOAT, though." Coker promoted a lot of kickboxing and K1 earlier in his career at a time when Mirko"Cro Cop" Filipovic was considered one of the game's elite strikers."Mirko was one of the greatest strikers in the history of striking fighting in K1 all those years and doing kickboxing all those years," Coker said."He made his transition to MMA and he fought Fedor.