The sport isn't old enough to have GOATs.

[chaps]

Mixed Martial Arts isn't old enough as a sport to have fighters called GOATs. We can have GOATs, it's just that every new champion is better than the previous one because the sport is so new.

Because the sport is so young, the current champions would crush the champions we had 5 years ago and the champs from five years ago would crush the ones from 2002 etc and so on. Why? Because the sport keeps evolving to a point where young kids will begin cross-training at 5 or 6 years old instead of wrestlers coming out of college at 22 and only THEN learning how to kickbox. When those young kids that began cross-training at 5 or 6 years old will invade the sport, have legendary careers of their own and then retire to bring a new generation of fighters, only then will it be fair to call them GOATs that will have a shot at staying as GOATs.

Let's take Muhammad Ali as an example. Every boxing fan agrees that Ali would dance circles around the Klitschko brothers. Boxing, is over 100 years old compared to the "new" sport of MMA which is not even 20 years old. So even though we have seen Ali lose, we still agree decades later that he is the greatest and no Heavyweight has been better since.

Let's take a look at the current top fighters in each weight class and compare them to the greatest of their weight class.

Heavyweight: 2012 JDS VS 2005 Fedor. Anyone think prime Fedor would win? I sure dont. JDS would outbox him.
Light Heavyweight: 2012 Jon Jones VS 2005 Chuck Liddell. Jones by KO.
Middleweight: 2012 Anderson Silva VS 1999 Frank Shamrock. Ok, I know Anderson is already the best ever at 185, so I'm comparing him to arguably the second most successful middleweight of all-time.
Welterweight: 2011 Georges St-Pierre VS 2004 Matt Hughes. Been there, done that.
Lightweight: 2012 Ben Henderson VS 2009 BJ Penn. Henderson by decision.

Name me one "old" sport out of Basketball, Hockey, Baseball, Football, Tennis, Golf etc that has a GOAT who competed in that specific sport's infant years and now decades and decades have went by and that specific GOAT is still the undisputable #1. There are none.

[GreenLantern141]

I dont think the sport has evolved as much as everybody thinks. Fighters get older and lose a step is all. The Fedor from 05 would decimate JDS imo.

And there is a GOAT of the sport. His name is Fedor.

[Unhinged]

The UFC Middleweight championship was renamed the Light-Heavyweight championship. Frank was a champion at Light-Heavyweight.

[MyPainYourGain]

Prime BJ would beat Bendo, prime Fedor would beat JDS, and Jones cant KO prime Chuck.

GSP and Anderson are GOATs of their weightclasses.

and Anderson and Fedor are GOATs

[TFanatic]

“all time" encompasses the amount of time the sport has been around. So of course there can be GOAT's. That doesn't mean they won't change.

[PeaceDownUnder]

All I see in this post is another noob who thinks his opinions are facts in some dimension that doesn't exist.

[chaps]

Originally Posted by Unhinged

The UFC Middleweight championship was renamed the Light-Heavyweight championship. Frank was a champion at Light-Heavyweight.

Correct, but I think we can all agree that he was a middleweight even though he competed at LHW. Anyone else has showed up at a weigh-in of a title fight with weights in his pants?

[Unhinged]

Also, I don't think Penn is a good example to use for Lightweight. Penn could arguably whoop Bendo style wise.

You could have used an even earlier fighter like Jens Pulver or Rumina Sato.

[Conan Lerehcob]

We COULD already have a GOAT, a guy that would have been so ahead of his competition in all aspect that he could have been champion at any point in time.

The fact that the sport is so young makes it hard but you never know.

[El Toucan]

Originally Posted by TFanatic

“all time" encompasses the amount of time the sport has been around. So of course there can be GOAT's. That doesn't mean they won't change.

Good answer. Sweet and obvious.

And btw, 2005 Chuck still gets his soul eaten by 2005 or 2009 Shogun, or by 2003 or 2007 Rampage. Chuck's TDD is all that makes the Jones fight so interesting, though we saw how well that worked for Lyoto.