Yeh, fortunate. People get fortune in different ways.
Idk much about his career, since I've only seen two of his fights in full (Cain, Overeem) and bits of the Mir (the finishes at most) and Randy fights. He beat Frank Mir and Randy Corture, who were both very good, although they were lighter than him. He didn't have good striking or submission threat, but he could just beat the fuck out of guys on the floor if he could get on top of them. He probably wasn't great at psychologically handling being punched hard asf. He's kinda hard to gauge because he was winning, then had surgery on his gut and got badly beat up (but managed to survive and win). Was it the surgery/one year layoff? Was it that he came back and fought someone who could both wrestle and was his size? Dunno. Then he fought again and lost to Cain, who's often considered the best HW ever at his peak (along with the last emperor Fedor Emelianenko, of course). Then he lost to Overeem who is about Brock's size again, but that was after another surgery where part of his digestive system was removed and Overeem even targeted Brock's body, finishing him with a body punch. Would Brock have lost these fights pre-surgeries, who knows. One could maybe do an in-depth technical analysis of his skills/typical path to victory and how it matches up with the skills of those he lost to to try to figure out if it was that they were just a bad matchup for him (excluding the Overeem fight, because there's no way of knowing if Brock could've taken the body strikes pre-surgery). In-depth analysis isn't just "he's a wrestler. The other guy is good at stopped wrestling", but looking at the exact techniques and setups used - stuff that's beyond me.
Vs modern guys I think it's hard to know lol, because he had so few fights before his surgeries. Also I hardly watch heavyweight MMA because the quality is absolute laughable trash compared to every male division middleweight and below or women's strawweight. Skill-wise the #500 lightweight or welterweight would probably be better than the #12 UFC heavyweight (Tai Tuivasa, #11 after the champion). Maybe even the #1000. Maybe even #2000 - as in amateurs, because I've watched some ammy fights on youtube and the skill level is no joke nowadays. I'm pretty sure he'd be top 10, but can't say more than that. After his first surgery can't see him beating Daniel Cormier (olympic wrestler, very good boxing) or probably Stipe Miocic, both of who were champion in the last few years, pre-surgery don't know at all. Think him vs Francis Ngannou could be cool, since they're both athletic freaks who started MMA late and are therefore quite raw skill-wise, with Brock being a good wrestler who can quickly smash you with strikes on the floor, but Ngannou has stupid power in his strikes in general, like his technique (in fights at least, training could look totally different. Like I remember reading that some of these Korean fighters that throw caution to the wind and brawl in the UFC are very technical in kickboxing sparring, supposedly) is basically non-existent, but he just smacks dudes who are way better strikers technically and they get knocked out. Would be interesting to see if Brock can take him down, now that Francis has improved his takedown defense (nothing complicated, like legit just sprawling and pushing his opponent's head down,but that was enough to stay standing against Miocic and then get a finish). If Ngannou keeps it standing Brock would be fucked I imagine, almost 100%.
Woo fuck gotta be up in either 3 or 4 hours to train depending on if I go to two or three classes. why do I do this (stay up). Came on here to check before sleeping, bad idea.