He sure did. Cougar is very good, although his stuff is a bit too antialiased. But I wouldn't want to be the one to say that one of my favourite pixel art pieces is a copy...
Edit: I did some googling, at first I remembered it being elmore, but I checked his online gallery and no such pic exists. I googled 'red dragon' and actually browsed the first 20 pages or so, it's bt the same artist as this
i'm pretty certain, but I certainly can't make out the signature
I'm sure I didn't dream this, Cougar has copied the dragon from somewhere. The rest is his, but the dragon head is from somewhere.