All HW champions fights - who are the greatest MMA HW champions?

[TallGHunter]

This may just be me, but didn't Fedor have more ufc hw champs in his division at pride than the ufc? Tim Silvia had a pretty shallow pool to wade in, while Fedor had deep waters.

 

[HuntoGoato]

Lol!

Fedor is not the #1 HW Champion of all-time.

Tim Sylvia > Fedor as champ. Sorry, girls.

#logic.

 

[Taric]

#logic.

It's completely illogical actually lol. The consensus #1 HW champion of everything of 6 years is obviously the most accomplished HW champion in MMA history.

 

[zec1234]

We have an algorithm that calculates championship points.
When we use those points, then we have the following order of HW champions:

1. Fedor Emelianenko (187)
2. Randy Couture (162)
3. Cain Velasquez (142)
4. Tim Sylvia (126)
5. Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira (113)

Now, why is Cain ahead of Sylvia?
Following graph should help us with that.
On the left side we have championship bouts for Tim and on the right for Cain.
Fights that they won have a vertical line and losses are having just a marker (no line beneath).

Championship Bout Level (8 is maximum value) shows how strong championship bout is in terms of participants and promotion strength.

Tim has more UFC titles (5) than Cain (4). He also has more overall title fights (10) than Cain (6).
But all those UFC titles fights are from the period when Pride had much stronger HW division and UFC HW belt was less important.

That is why Tim's overall championship total is lower than Cain's.

 

[Magnum1978]

Interesting but I just can't see how bigfoot is higher championship win (for cain) than say fedor or nog would have been (even though the promotion was strong) - the UFC dictate title shots, and is not always indicative of 'strength' of the defense/opponent

Its always going to be flawed.

I don't care what 'promotion strength' is, Tim beating AA (either time) is a better win than Cain beating BF.

But I guess its interesting statistically nonetheless

 

[zec1234]

Interesting but I just can't see how bigfoot is higher championship win (for cain) than say fedor or nog would have been (even though the promotion was strong) - the UFC dictate title shots, and is not always indicative of 'strength' of the defense/opponent

Its always going to be flawed.

I don't care what 'promotion strength' is, Tim beating AA (either time) is a better win than Cain beating BF.

But I guess its interesting statistically nonetheless

You cannot have more dominant division than UFC HW at the time when we had Cain - Antonio Silva fight.
UFC had all top HW fighters that were not retired.
This championship didn't get the highest possible mark (8) because Antonio was not the #2 or #3.

To see how strong UFC HW division was at that time, just look at the rankings after Cain vs. Big Foot :

 

[zec1234]

Lineal Champion > Promotional Champion

Multiple people here talk about Lineal Championship.
That is an interesting and very fancy concept.
But, I don't know what it should represent?
Should that be #1 fighter in the world?
Or a replacement for all other championship belts?

Here are some of my concerns about that concept:

1.) Deciding on where Lineal champion starts is very arbitrary. How do we decide on who will be first?
It makes a huge difference if you chose different starting point.

2.) Is this just for divisional championships or P4P as well?
Because some people want to see just one universal lineal belt. They usually start with Open-weight tournaments, and that evolves in different directions.

3.) What happens when LW divisional lineal champ goes up to WW or even MW? And then goes down again?

4.) If the current lineal champion starts fighting opponents with low rating, is he still a lineal champion?
Or if he stops fighting for a few years? Who decides when inactivity should strip him of that title?

5.) When somehow we define lineal title vacant, who and how is deciding on next lineal champion?

6.) In case when we start with champion of one organization, and their champions always stay there, wouldn't that forever exclude all champions from all other organizations?

Those are just some questions and it would be nice to see what proponents of lineal champions say.

 

[LHWBelt]

What do you guys think about ranking the greatest MMA HW champions?
How that ranking should look like and what do you use to create that ranking?

As a reference I will show historical time line with fights for the most prestigious HW belts.

1. Fedor
2. Couture
3. Sylvia
4. Werdum
5. Cain

That's how I'd put it right now with Arlovski and Big Nog being somewhere in the top ten.

 

[LHWBelt]

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/defence#English

Don't get me started on the nonsense that is english writing

Wanderlei fought at HW vs Hunt and this is why he didn't lose the Pride MW title.

If Anderson lost to Forrest at LHW, of course he'd still be the MW champion.

These things make sense. UFC title fights make sense this way. Pride don't.

This is America thus you are wrong.

 

[CoffeeAndBeer]

Multiple people here talk about Linear Championship.
That is an interesting and very fancy concept.
But, I don't know what it should represent?
Should that be #1 fighter in the world?
Or a replacement for all other championship belts?

....

It's "Lineal"

And the concept is likely at least a century old; also, fairly straight forward and not "fancy" at all.

Where "belts" from this or that promotion/sanctioning body can be, and often are, contrivances --manufactured, propped up, forced-- the Lineal Title is a clear cut line of succession (generally speaking).

 

[zec1234]

It's "Lineal"

And the concept is likely at least a century old; also, fairly straight forward and not "fancy" at all.

Where "belts" from this or that promotion/sanctioning body can be, and often are, contrivances --manufactured, propped up, forced-- the Lineal Title is a clear cut line of succession (generally speaking).

No, it is a not clear cut as you think.

Let's start with my first question.

1.) Deciding on where Linear champion starts is very arbitrary. How do we decide on who will be first?
It makes a huge difference if you chose different starting point.

Why is Rickson Gracie never mentioned as the first lineal champion?
Are people skipping Rickson just because he retired as undefeated?

Rickson Gracie fought Casemiro Nascimento Martins in 1980 and that should qualify for the beginning of lineal champion.

Or if you want to start with some tournament, Rickson won Vale Tudo tournament in 1994.
Everybody considered Rickson to be much stronger and skilled that his younger brother Royce. And most people still start their lineal championship with Royce.


Maybe HW lineal championship should start with Pancrase? They were there before UFC and they had stronger fighters.

Start with Ken Shamrock in 1994, go to Minoru Suzuki and then Bas Rutten.
Then we have Bas undefeated for a long period and he finally retires as UFC champion in 1999. He was both Pancrase and UFC HW champion.
He comes back for one more fight in 2006.


If we start with Ken Shamrock's UFC title, we have one path, and if we start with Ken Shamrock title from Pancrase, then we have completely different path.

Starting from Pancrase:
17-Dec-94, Ken Shamrock -> 13-May-95, Minoru Suzuki -> 01-Sep-95, Bas Rutten

Starting from UFC:
14-Jul-95, Ken Shamrock -> 17-May-96, Dan Severn -> 07-Feb-97, Mark Coleman -> 27-Jul-97, Maurice Smith -> 21-Dec-97, Randy Couture -> 25-Oct-98, Enson Inoue -> 30-Jan-00, Mark Kerr 01-May-00, Kazuyuki Fujita -> 01-May-00, Kazuyuki Fujita -> 01-May-00, Mark Coleman -> 24-Sep-01, Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira

If we start with UFC first tournament (Royce Gracie), we will at the end have same line, but fighters in the middle will be different:

12-Nov-93, Royce Gracie -> 01-May-00, Kazushi Sakuraba -> 01-May-00, Igor Vovchanchyn -> 01-May-00, Mark Coleman -> 24-Sep-01, Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira

So, it is not a clear cut.
And that is just my first concern.

 

[CoffeeAndBeer]

...
Here are some of my concerns about that concept [Lineal Title]:

1.) Deciding on where Linea[l] champion starts is very arbitrary. How do we decide on who will be first?
It makes a huge difference if you chose different starting point.

2.) Is this just for divisional championships or P4P as well?
Because some people want to see just one universal linear belt. They usually start with Open-weight tournaments, and that evolves in different directions.

3.) What happens when LW divisional linear champ goes up to WW or even MW? And then goes down again?

4.) If the current linea[l] champion starts fighting opponents with low rating, is he still a linea[l] champion?
Or if he stops fighting for a few years? Who decides when inactivity should strip him of that title?

5.) When somehow we define linea[l] title vacant, who and how is deciding on next linear champion?

6.) In case when we start with champion of one organization, and their champions always stay there, wouldn't that forever exclude all champions from all other organizations?

Those are just some questions and it would be nice to see what proponents of linea[l] champions say.

1) It's not "very" arbitrary. And however arbitrary it may be, it's definitely not any more arbitrary than XYZ promotion org or sanctioning body deciding who fights for their initial "belt."

2) The premise/concept of P4P and Lineal are antithetical.

3) Good question. No great answer. But ultimately it's left to history to make that determination.

4) Lineal is Lineal. And see number 3.

5) It's general consensus. The paramount facet here being that it is not restricted/beholden to any particular promotion/body; and again, it's ultimately left to history.

6) Well, only if that organization chooses not to ever match-up fighters with fighters from other organizations.



Having said that...
Consensus > Lineal > Promotional

 

[CoffeeAndBeer]

Let me re-emphasize...

It's "Lineal"

And the concept is likely at least a century old; also, fairly straight forward and not "fancy" at all.

Where "belts" from this or that promotion/sanctioning body can be, and often are, contrivances --manufactured, propped up, forced-- the Lineal Title is a clear cut line of succession (generally speaking).

 

[zec1234]

Let me re-emphasize...

Even when you emphasize generally speaking, it doesn't help.
Help me with few examples of your lineal championships.


Lineal championship is very convoluted and not "usually true",


I will use another example : LHW.

Where do you start LHW lineal championship?
If we start with first UFC tournament, then we have

07-Feb-97, Jerry Bohlander -> 27-Sep-97, Murilo Bustamante -> 28-Sep-01, Chuck Liddell -> 06-Jun-03, Randy Couture -> 31-Jan-04, Vitor Belfort -> 21-Aug-04, Randy Couture -> 16-Apr-05, Chuck Liddell -> ...

This excludes all champions outside of UFC (including Pride).


If we start with the first real LHW UFC champion (Frank Shamrock), then we have a very interesting case:

21-Dec-97, Frank Shamrock -> 10-Feb-07, Renzo Gracie -> 10-Apr-10, Matt Hughes -> 20-Nov-10, B.J. Penn -> 29-Oct-11, Nick Diaz -> 04-Feb-12, Carlos Condit

 

[CoffeeAndBeer]

The line of succession is clear cut, generally speaking, in that....

Jon Jones = Lineal Champ
Daniel Cormier's "Belt" = Contrivance

 

[THECYNDlCATE]

Im sorry, but I just can't count Tim for anything.
He was an example of what MMA was not about. This sport was about technique being able to beat size,.. yet Tim really won, only because of his size. It always put a bad taste in my mouth. Add to this the steroids and the clear lack of technical ability and I just don't want to give him any credit for anything. He gets on my nerves. Whenever he had to fight skilled fighters who were somewhat strong,.. he got murdered.

If you want to rate how impressive a fighter was,.. he was the least.

 

[zec1234]

The line of succession is clear cut, generally speaking, in that....

Jon Jones = Lineal Champ
Daniel Cormier's "Belt" = Contrivance

You just gave me the current situation for LHW, but not the whole path on how did you get there from the very beginning.
Do you consider UFC champions to be start and end of every division?


1. What happens with LHW lineal championship if Jon Jones never comes back?
2. Or if he is exiled from UFC and fights in Japan? And he gets high for the fight and is defeated by some Japanese?
3. Or he moves to HW?

 

[zec1234]

Im sorry, but I just can't count Tim for anything.
He was an example of what MMA was not about. This sport was about technique being able to beat size,.. yet Tim really won, only because of his size. It always put a bad taste in my mouth. Add to this the steroids and the clear lack of technical ability and I just don't want to give him any credit for anything. He gets on my nerves. Whenever he had to fight skilled fighters who were somewhat strong,.. he got murdered.

If you want to rate how impressive a fighter was,.. he was the least.

He wasn't my favorite fighter either. But he was wining fights and that is what counts.
People here use words "like" and "hate" a lot. Not very objective way to do ranking.

 

[Killme]

I think tim syliva still ranks as the best hw in ufc history

 

[THECYNDlCATE]

He wasn't my favorite fighter either. But he was wining fights and that is what counts.
People here use words "like" and "hate" a lot. Not very objective way to do ranking.

He was winning fights against extremely weak fighters.

Its a kin to me fighting children. It was a joke.