Rock'em Sock'em Cro Cop: Mirko Filipovic's 5 best knockouts

Legendary heavyweight Mirko "Cro Cop" Filipovic hung up his gloves on Tuesday, mere days after taking the Rizin Fighting Federation Open-Weight Grand Prix in Japan, where he cut his teeth as a mixed martial artist while competing under the PRIDE FC banner.

The Croatian sensation regaled fight fans with his vaunted striking throughout his 15-year career, and his lethal kicking techniques quickly became the stuff of legend, spawning the now immortal and ominous boast: "Right kick: hospital. Left kick: cemetery."

Here are five shining displays of the carnage Filipovic left in the ring:

Heath Herring - PRIDE 26

No ground game? No problem.

Cro Cop found himself in a textbook style clash when he faced Heath Herring, a submission grappler who'd moved to Holland in an effort to sharpen his striking under the tutelage of world-renowned kickboxing camp Golden Glory. "The Texas Crazy Horse" repeatedly angled to take the fight to the ground, but Cro Cop frustrated him with his flawless sprawl, leaving Herring little choice but to try his luck on the feet.

The Croatian sent his larger foe back to the drawing board with a blistering kick to the liver before capping the carnage with a barrage of punches just 3:17 in.

Igor Vovchanchyn - PRIDE Total Elimination 2003

Few fighters can better attest to the power in Filipovic's left leg than Igor Vovchanchyn.

This kickboxing battle yielded fireworks in short order, as Cro Cop met his fellow Slav in the center of the ring and rode his sneaky straight left to set up a left head kick that flatlined Vovchanchyn just 90 seconds in.

Filipovic handed the Ukraine native his first knockout loss with the kick, which would soon become his calling card.

Aleksander Emelianenko - PRIDE Final Conflict 2004

Cro Cop may have faltered in his effort to dethrone PRIDE heavyweight champion Fedor Emelianenko in 2005, but his brother Aleksander never stood a chance.

For two minutes, the younger Emelianenko gave chase and tirelessly swung for a finish, but Filipovic handily eluded the flurries before making the towering Russian pay for his headhunting ways, uncorking a patented head kick that sent him crashing to the canvas.

Mark Coleman - PRIDE 29

Who would've thought a natural-born striker would prove a wrestler's worst nightmare?

Former UFC heavyweight champion Mark Coleman came into his February 2005 meeting with Cro Cop aiming to return to the heights he'd reached in both the Octagon and the far East, but Filipovic first dashed his hopes by stuffing Coleman's takedown attempts with his trusty sprawl, then obliterated them with a trio of left hands that dropped him flat on his face.

Wanderlei Silva - PRIDE Final Conflict Absolute

Filipovic took some bad blood into his rematch with Wanderlei Silva, and as expected, he wasted little time in exorcising it.

A career light heavyweight, "The Axe Murderer" packed on 20 pounds for his rematch with Cro Cop, not that it did him any favors. Filipovic picked the Muay Thai artist apart and nearly beat Silva's right eye shut before notching his fourth and final head kick KO to advance to the finals of the 2006 Open-Weight Grand Prix, where he capped his illustrious run in PRIDE with a submission victory over Josh Barnett.