16 Greatest HW’s of all time

[GOAT.]

Prime is a very controversial and unclear subject. I’ve debunked statistically that concept of prime floating around Sherdog is rubbish. It’s basically made as an excuse for Fedor’s failure. All this bs that fighter is in his prime in his 20’s, 9 years as a pro and no more than 30 would basically mean that every UFC champ and top contenders right now are mostly out of prime.

The only way we can judge a win is by fighters performance before the fight and their ranking. Stipe’s wins are elite

Lol you're dumb as hell and probably never played or competed in any sports.

Hence you think 40 year old athletes are in their prime smh

 

[Arrrrgh]

You’re completely wrong.

FightMatrix isn’t based on subjective opinion, it’s based on a algorithm calculating wins/ loses/ ways of winning/ strength of competition etc. It’s the most unbiased ranking available

Direct from their website:

"This system needed to be able to factor in special considerations like impressive debuting fighters, “fluke” wins, inactivity, etc, so the decision was made to study respected rankings, and make a software system that properly place the keystone fighters in the divisions, but take bias out of the equation by ignoring overly hyped fighters, giving credit to underrated fighters, and being able to pull the cord on fighters who are well past their prime. In addition, the system also excels by being much more scalable then your typical Top 10s and 15s, by analyzing even the most minor shows."

see the highlighted bolded part.
They are claiming to remove bias, by literally introducing it to the algorithm. That's their BASE rankings. They are picking and choosing "keystone fighters." That's subjective bias.

But that's not what this post is.
This post is a bastardized version of that.

The problem they have is too small a sample size to use the methodology they are trying to use. You can't put science on top of opinion. End of the day, any fight decided by decision is a subjective opinion. The entire thing is subjective in nature.

I bet if they showed their algorithm and measured it's success by how well it predicts rankings 1 step in the future it would do a trash job. IDK how else to explain it without going into things like heteroskedasticity (which almost certainly exists albeit difficult to show until the end of a fighters career when enough data exists).

Again, it's bias.
And it's a problem of small samples.

 

[GOATtalks]

Lol you're dumb as hell and probably never played or competed in any sports.

Hence you think 40 year old athletes are in their prime smh

I’m a professional athlete, lol. I’m 31 right now, I feel as good as ever. But that’s irrelevant to the discussion.

Current UFC champions:

Ngannou 34 years old
Jan 38
Izzy 32
Usman 34
Oliviera 31
Volkanovski 32
Aljo 32
Moreno 27

There is only one fighter in his late 20’s as a UFC champ, everyone else is in their 30’s. Jan should be dead right by your idea of prime, yet he’s the champ.
38 years old, 36 pro fights and 14+ years as pro. Your logic is flawed and it’s statistically proven

 

[GOATtalks]

Direct from their website:


see the highlighted bolded part.
They are claiming to remove bias, by literally introducing it to the algorithm. That's their BASE rankings. They are picking and choosing "keystone fighters." That's subjective bias.

But that's not what this post is.
This post is a bastardized version of that.

The problem they have is too small a sample size to use the methodology they are trying to use. You can't put science on top of opinion. End of the day, any fight decided by decision is a subjective opinion. The entire thing is subjective in nature.

I bet if they showed their algorithm and measured it's success by how well it predicts rankings 1 step in the future it would do a trash job. IDK how else to explain it without going into things like heteroskedasticity (which almost certainly exists albeit difficult to show until the end of a fighters career when enough data exists).

Again, it's bias.
And it's a problem of small samples.

A solid argument I’ll give you that. It’s still less biased than a ranking made by a single person or small group of people though

 

[GOAT.]

I’m a professional athlete, lol. I’m 31 right now, I feel as good as ever. But that’s irrelevant to the discussion.

Current UFC champions:

Ngannou 34 years old
Jan 38
Izzy 32
Usman 34
Oliviera 31
Volkanovski 32
Aljo 32
Moreno 27

There is only one fighter in his late 20’s as a UFC champ, everyone else is in their 30’s. Jan should be dead right by your idea of prime, yet he’s the champ.
38 years old, 36 pro fights and 14+ years as pro. Your logic is flawed and it’s statistically proven

Smh I bet your dumbass thinks Aldo and Conor are in their prime too since they're under 35.

 

[GOATtalks]

Smh I bet your dumbass thinks Aldo and Conor are in their prime too since they're under 35.

Aldo showed a great improvement technically in his last fight. He broke his own record for significant strikes in a fight and it only lasted 3 rounds. His fight IQ and pacing have greatly improved. He’s one fight away from a title shot. He may or may not have lost a step physically, but he might even be better now than ever do to improvements he has made. He lost to Conor and Max in his prime though.

Conor is a rare example, because of his lifestyle. Dustin Poirier is the same age and has more miles, but he’s definitely in his prime

 

[BFoe]

Well you see, you’re wrong, because it’s your biased “shitty” opinion that the HW division was more stacked back then. It’s not objective in any measurable way. In fact I could make an opposing argument and back it up with facts.

Making the opposing argument would still just prove my point about this list though. The point is that those who fought in more stacked divisions are at a disadvantage in this system. Compiling this list took a lot of effort, and I really do appreciate that—it’s an interesting list. But while I understand your thought process of assigning a point value to each ranked win based on the ranking, that opens up a lot of problems. Depending on generated rankings for those point values also brings up quite a few problems.
Look at poor DC, who only gets a measly 3 points for beating Barnett—who was on a nine fight win streak which included people like Yoshida, Monson, Russo, Yvel, Rogers, and Kharitonov—and gets 5 pts for beating Derrick Lewis who was on a 3 fight streak (Tybura LOL, that awful “win” over Ngannou, and Volkov). But Gane gets even more points for his fight with Lewis than DC does for Lewis or Barnett. At the time, Lewis was on a 4-fight streak. That included Ilir Latifi (who was moving up to HW for the first time after a 2-fight losing skid at LHW), a split decision over Old Man Ivanov, a win over even more ancient Olenik, plus Curtis Blaydes (which is a respectable win).

These things aren’t your fault, you’re just compiling the data. That data is questionable though.

I’m open to improve the list and I’m still working on it. I haven’t solved how to deal with Werdum’s issue yet

I appreciate that openness, but some of this is FightMatrix’s doing and can’t really be fixed. Aside from the issue of Cain for Werdum, I listed things like Werdum being ranked higher than Sylvia in the summer of ‘08. At that point, Sylvia had won 7 of his previous 9 fights (the 2 he lost were title fights)—and that included 2 wins over Arlovski, whom FightMatrix also has ranked higher than Sylvia. Arlovski was ranked that high based on the win streak he started after the 2 Sylvia losses, which included a win over Werdum, whom FightMatrix ranks higher than both Arlovski and Sylvia in July ‘08. Werdum for his part was about to be booked against JDS, after which he was cut from the UFC with a 2-2 run.
I get that rankings have lots of moving parts, not just these 3 fighters obviously. I’m just saying that there’s a lot of questionable ranking going on here, and when you assign a point value to it as you are that skews results.

 

[Arrrrgh]

A solid argument I’ll give you that. It’s still less biased than a ranking made by a single person or small group of people though

oh 100%.
It at least has a stated methodology, albeit one that is really measuring "who accumulates the most high quality wins" and defining that as "greatness." If a guy fights 50 top 10 fights and wins 25 of them he essentially breaks this system by having 25 quality wins... it makes no mention of the 25 losses or the fact he's basically a very active career gatekeeper.

So it may be the least biased rankings we have...
but still biased.

Now, if the UFC said this is the system we will use to rank fighters it would change things. Fighters knowing what the rules of rankings are basically removes the subjectivity and probably has a good unintended consequence of encouraging fighters to be more active to move up in the rankings. Losses wouldn't hurt so much but injuries and long layoffs would be brutal.

The real problem is what does "greatest" mean. If everyone fought as much as Jeremy Horn or that child porn guy whos name isn't worth remembering then we would have plenty of data. But it is what it is.

I don't think Conor is better than Aldo because of the one fight. But that one fight is all the data we have on those two but when that data goes into this algorithm that's exactly what it says. If they fought 10x it would work a lot better....

Fightmatrix seems to say greatest is who accumulates the most high quality wins in their career. That's a decent approach with the data we have available, but still just an opinion of how to measure greatness.

Anyway, that's all the paragraphs I got today. Back to work my dude. Good thread tho.

 

[Deleted member 110072]

1. Rankings is actually the only objective criteria when comparing strength of schedule for each fighter, everything else is subjective, like your subjective opinion that the division is weaker now, than it was 15 years ago.

2. I used FightMatrix for 2 reasons. First of all I took a existing thread of @acannxr and upgraded it. Secondly, it’s based on algorithms rather than opinions, making it less prone to biased judgment.

3. Was Fedor that lost to Werdum any worse than Fedor that lost Big Foot? Is Paolo Costa a worse fighter after his loss to Izzy? You’re getting ridiculous and pathetic here. Yes, obviously a fighter coming of a loss is considered a worse win than a fighter on a 5 fight win streak. It’s common knowledge.

1.As I said though stats can be manipulated to suit an agenda as well and again they simply arent a final judgement on quality, to pretend they are is obviously dishonest. Your whole line of thinking that subjective arguement is meaningless means your never really going to have much interesting to say or much knowledge of MMA beyond what your sold by the UFC.

2.Fightmatrix is really far from perfect either.

3.Was the Fedor that lost to Bigfoot worse than the one who lost to Werdum? I would say he was probably at a pretty similar level, could argue his standup may have gotten sloppier but we didnt really see that tested against Werdum. That does highlight really what I was saying that beating a fighter at maximum ranking really can overplay how good they were and how well they do afterwards can be a big factor in how good the win really was.

 

[Deleted member 110072]

I’m a professional athlete, lol. I’m 31 right now, I feel as good as ever. But that’s irrelevant to the discussion.

Current UFC champions:

Ngannou 34 years old
Jan 38
Izzy 32
Usman 34
Oliviera 31
Volkanovski 32
Aljo 32
Moreno 27

There is only one fighter in his late 20’s as a UFC champ, everyone else is in their 30’s. Jan should be dead right by your idea of prime, yet he’s the champ.
38 years old, 36 pro fights and 14+ years as pro. Your logic is flawed and it’s statistically proven

Milage can be a bigger factor than age, guys like Fedor, Nog and Crocop all started high level careers young and were very active.

The higher ages at HW and LHW is not a goof sign for those divisions strenght.

 

[GOAT.]

Aldo showed a great improvement technically in his last fight. He broke his own record for significant strikes in a fight and it only lasted 3 rounds. His fight IQ and pacing have greatly improved. He’s one fight away from a title shot. He may or may not have lost a step physically, but he might even be better now than ever do to improvements he has made. He lost to Conor and Max in his prime though.

Conor is a rare example, because of his lifestyle. Dustin Poirier is the same age and has more miles, but he’s definitely in his prime

Yes this is why you're dumb, using exceptional cases as norms..let's look at some more fighters shall we:

Rizzo: Never had a top win after 2005/06. Done by age 33.

Ricco: Done fighting at top level in 2003. Hung on for a few years losing to anyone relevant. Totally done by age ~33.

Mir: Last time he was at all relevant and had top wins was in 2012. 33 years of age.

Randleman: Last top win at age 32.

Arlovski: Left the UFC and got brutally. Done as a top guy by 2011 at
age ~31.

Sylvia: Done as a top guy after 2008, at age 32.

Brock: Last win at age 33.

JDS: Basically done as a top guy by age 31, in 2015. Clearly washed by 2017, at age 33. Hobbled on vs mostly irrelevant guys after.

Cain: Done after 2013, at age 31. Hardly fought after period.

Let's look at Sugar Ray Leonard who never won a fight after the age of 33 or the athletes in all other sports world wide who are cooked by 30.

The few exceptions you posted don't prove your point, it just exposes you as an idiot. Aldo isn't in his prime and 40 year old, fat blob , post back surgery DC wasn't in his prime when Stipe beat him. Neither were Reem, JDS or AA.

Smh man you're dumb as hell lol

 

[GOATtalks]

Milage can be a bigger factor than age, guys like Fedor, Nog and Crocop all started high level careers young and were very active.

The higher ages at HW and LHW is not a goof sign for those divisions strenght.

Jan beat the young Reyes, who arguably beat Jon Jones and then he beat the young star in Izzy. Your point is invalid.

Jan and Oliviera have way more mileage than the guys you named had when they got demolished. Izzy has had more than 100 pro combat fights. Your arguments don’t work.

 

[mjfan23]

Mods: please rename this thread to top ten examples of GOATtalks making a fool of himself

 

[Taric]

This methodology would be fine if you took a consensus of various historical ranking websites (fightmatrix, Sherdog, tapology, mmaworldrankings, etc) and then calculated it the same way that you have.

Using just one individual ranking website for this skews it in so many different ways. There's so many individual rankings listed that are so far off based of how Sherdog, etc ranked them during the time. Just as an example, Sylvia and Arlovski were both ranked #3 and #4 by Sherdog when Fedor defeated them but fightmatrix has them way lower.

If you took a consensus ranking from multiple different sources you'd get a more accurate representation to base this off of.

 

[Deleted member 110072]

Jan beat the young Reyes, who arguably beat Jon Jones and then he beat the young star in Izzy. Your point is invalid.

Jan and Oliviera have way more mileage than the guys you named had when they got demolished. Izzy has had more than 100 pro combat fights. Your arguments don’t work.

No, a division which depends on aging fighters isnt generally a division in good health.

Izzy really didnt have that many fights against elite kickboxers and indeed still hasnt had that many elite fights in MMA, he's much lower milage than Mirko was at the same age plus of course not every fighter will age the same way.

This methodology would be fine if you took a consensus of various historical ranking websites (fightmatrix, Sherdog, tapology, mmaworldrankings, etc) and then calculated the same way that you have.

Using just one individual ranking website for this skews it in so many different ways. There's just so many individual ranings listed that are so far off based of how Sherdog, etc ranked them during the time. Just as an example, Sylvia and Arlovski were both ranked #3 and #4 by Sherdog when Fedor defeated them but fightmatrix has them way lower.

Fightmatric really has the problem that because it tries to depend only on mathamatics over time it became more and more skewed away from reality.

 

[GOATtalks]

Yes this is why you're dumb, using exceptional cases as norms..let's look at some more fighters shall we:

Rizzo: Never had a top win after 2005/06. Done by age 33.

Ricco: Done fighting at top level in 2003. Hung on for a few years losing to anyone relevant. Totally done by age ~33.

Mir: Last time he was at all relevant and had top wins was in 2012. 33 years of age.

Randleman: Last top win at age 32.

Arlovski: Left the UFC and got brutally. Done as a top guy by 2011 at
age ~31.

Sylvia: Done as a top guy after 2008, at age 32.

Brock: Last win at age 33.

JDS: Basically done as a top guy by age 31, in 2015. Clearly washed by 2017, at age 33. Hobbled on vs mostly irrelevant guys after.

Cain: Done after 2013, at age 31. Hardly fought after period.

Let's look at Sugar Ray Leonard who never won a fight after the age of 33 or the athletes in all other sports world wide who are cooked by 30.

The few exceptions you posted don't prove your point, it just exposes you as an idiot. Aldo isn't in his prime and 40 year old, fat blob , post back surgery DC wasn't in his prime when Stipe beat him. Neither were Reem, JDS or AA.

Smh man you're dumb as hell lol

Calling me names just shows your ignorance. I’ve proven on this forum that the average age, number of fights and years as a pro for today’s elite, completely disprove your idea of prime. I’ve done it many times and I’m not going to do it again, because you can’t even understand that 2+2=4.

 

[GOATtalks]

This methodology would be fine if you took a consensus of various historical ranking websites (fightmatrix, Sherdog, tapology, mmaworldrankings, etc) and then calculated the same way that you have.

Using just one individual ranking website for this skews it in so many different ways. There's just so many individual ranings listed that are so far off based of how Sherdog, etc ranked them during the time. Just as an example, Sylvia and Arlovski were both ranked #3 and #4 by Sherdog when Fedor defeated them but fightmatrix has them way lower.

Good point, but I have a life too. Maybe you have the time to do it? I would appreciate it a lot

 

[Taric]

Good point, but I have a life too. Maybe you have the time to do it? I would appreciate it a lot

I too am lazy.

 

[GOATtalks]

No, a division which depends on aging fighters isnt generally a division in good health.

Izzy really didnt have that many fights against elite kickboxers and indeed still hasnt had that many elite fights in MMA, he's much lower milage than Mirko was at the same age.



Fightmatric really has the problem that because it tries to depend only on mathamatics over time it became more and more skewed away from reality.

This is the worst reasoning that lives here on Sherdog. Does it matter if you get KO’ed stiff on regional level competition or at UFC title fight? Their have been lethal outcomes in MMA bouts outside of UFC. I guess those poor souls didn’t absorb that much mileage though, because it wasn’t against elite competition. You’re getting stupider by the minute trying to defend a dumb narrative

 

[Deleted member 110072]

This is the worst reasoning that lives here on Sherdog. Does it if you get KO’ed stiff on regional level competition or at UFC title fight? Their have been lethal outcomes in MMA bouts outside of UFC. I guess those poor souls didn’t absorb that much mileage though, because it wasn’t against elite competition. You’re getting stupider by the minute trying to defend a dumb narrative

The level of damage your likely to take from both the fight and the training is obviously more likely to be greater the higher the level you fight, you ask Izzy yourself whether he's training harder now than he was at the dawn of his career or whether the Jan fight was harder on him than some small regional win and you know what the answer will be.

Honestly my opinion of you remains that you an attension seeking troll just posting stuff you know will get a reaction for your attention jollies which shows a pretty extreme level of disrespect to anyone on these forums looking for honest debate.