Best striking defense in mma history?

[Bobbybackpack]

Poirier is very underrated, he even nullified Justin dirty kicks.

He ate a lot of the kicks though. He just touched it out he didn’t nullify them.

 

[Brady2Moss2007]

Adesayna's defense is largely based on his rubberband-like elusiveness and agility rather than technique.

Anderson arguably had the most insane ways to roll with punches not just avoiding them. He would routinely put fighters who were slow on skates, like against Forest Griffin and Stephan Bonnar

 

[kalabula]

Poirier is very underrated, he even nullified Justin dirty kicks.

Not o nitpick here, but he definitely did not nullify JG’s kicks. Dustin could barely walk by the end of the fight.

 

[PicoPulse]

When Machidas defense is on its on

 

[ironfist05]

Nobody is mentioning Garbrandt, Penn or Rampage, who were up their in their primes

 

[Iron Nick]

Great analysis mate, absolutely spot on.

Yeah, If I had to go by division, it would look something like -

HW - Gane? Honestly there aren't many that stand out lol, and Gane hasn't had enough fights yet for us to really judge.
LHW - Jones, as you say his head defense is very clean, but being a PEDS cheat and all. Machida deserves a mention as well.
MW - Silva by quite a bit, but lack of good strikers and PEDS (Although I tend to think he took them to heal his leg break and not before, but maybe that's just my bias showing). Izzy is good, but he was in a war with Gastelum, and imo his length and reach is what does a lot of the defensiveness, I don't think he is on the level of Silva.
WW - GSP was very good, Wonderboy has been very good as well.
LW - BJ Penn would be my pick IMO, but Khabib is very sound, although I tend to think most of that comes from the grappling threat and without it he would get fucked up lol. Still, it's impressive.
FW - Aldo or Volk. Volk is super defensively sound, and Aldo was one of the greatest hair trigger head movement and leg kick defense guys on the planet. His cardio let him down, but before that his defense was as close to perfect as you can get.

Aldo with Usman level cardio is the most defensively sound fighter ever.

BW - obviously Cruz, but I think TJ and Yan deserve a mention. Now, Yan hasn't been in enough fights yet, but his blocking is superb. However, Aldo was legit smashing his leg until his durability and cardio gave out, so I would deduct points for that.

TJ is a funny case, because although he gets hit a lot, it's impressive how many punches he can string together in combination without getting hit. I would say he has the greatest head movement offensively of anyone I can think of.

FW - MM is a great pick, and one of the best defensive fighters ever. As you say, his head movement was so-so, but his range and timing and ability to read opponents combos was just amazing.

Thank you man, yours is spot on too, regardless of minor differences in opinion when it comes to Izzy (they might not even be that pronounced, though.)

BJ Penn is an amazing shout, i can't believe i forgot him, a guy that did tape on many UFC fighters who worked with GSP, said that Penn had the fastest reaction time out of all fighters je studied, with Machida coming in 2nd.
Penn's peak was so short, it makes me almost mad he didn't have the discipline of a GSP or so.
Still, in his prime and when they first fought, GSP almost couldn't hit him and that's saying a lot.
I remember Penn dodging straight punches and even jumping over one or several leg kicks from GSP, insane stuff imo.

Gane is totally fair too, only reason i wouldn't list him yet is that he's still so early in his career and one might criticize the overall skill level of heavyweight too, but then again he had two crystal clear wins against Rozenstruik and Volkov, both of which are good to very good strikers imo.
I also think there's a very slow but gradual increase in skills at heavyweight.

Due to USADA it has been shallow for a while, but like i said, i think it gradually gets better.
(Imagine if fighting was financially more attractive, that'd make a massive difference in talent in these divisions in no time).

 

[Poatan Power]

Silva
Cruz
Jones

But it's Silva by a mile. Jones defense was largely predicated on a great offense. Silva's offense was largely predicated on what appeared like an instinctual defense.

 

[Deathbycalfkick]

Came to say this. But his kick defense left a lot to be desired.

Page is one of my favorite fighters, but that shit used to annoy the hell out of me. CHECK THE FUCKIN KICKS!!!!! ffs he lost his belt over that stubbornness.

 

[HaulParris]

Flashiest is Silva. Most unique is Cruz. simply best at not getting hit clean is Khabib and GSP.

Good analysis.

My contribution to the thread is this - I think we need to take into account strength of schedule (meaning someone like Hunt and Overeem probably absorbed way too many strikes from fighting mostly stand up wars with upper-level fighters), whether we count active but not powerful ground-n-pound (Chael vs Silva 1), as and ability to no-sell absorbed strikes (Frankie twinkle-toeing his way to decisions while absorbing way too many strikes from Maynard/Aldo, etc) when we talk about this topic.

 

[613]

Cool.

Doesn’t make him any less a brilliant defensive striker when he needs to be.

His defence is pretty much just poor mans Anderson

 

[613]

Defense only counts when you are going forward and playing with fire

My God you're stupid!

 

[ironfist05]

oh also TJ has to be up there too

 

[TerrorTimmy]

The guy who put people in the matrix and turned their lives upside down until he was almost 40.

This is the only answer.

What he did to great fighters was just unfair. How do you hit a guy who moved better than Neo in the Matrix?

 

[Drugstore Cowboy]

My God you're stupid!

nah
I'm highly intelligent
I have 20 years of experience in sweet science
I've been around pro fighters as long as I'm alive
I know that real craft is only measured under danger

 

[danny23]

Striking still isn't great. Besides MAYBE the Chael spinning elbow we see shit like that in every fight. Even title fights. It's delusional to watch those gifs, watch the crap we get today and think striking has evolved so much in 10 years

Nope, there’s a clear change, just believe your eyes as you see it.
The poor strikers today are still miles better than Franklin and Griffin ever were. Even today’s WMMA is better.

 

[djacobox372]

Prime Machida was almost untouchable.

 

[AdamantiumPimmel]

Jones?
Khabib?

yatsu

 

[Pious Augustus]

Underrated take imo.

If you look at strikes absorbed per fight, Ngannou has the best defense in UFC HW history.
In 13 UFC fights, he has absorbed 149 sig strikes, that is 11.46 per fight.
He has never been finished, knocked down, injured or cut.

In comparison, Khabib, who also has 3 UFC fights, has absorbed 301 sig strikes. And even that is impressive, but it is twice as much as Ngannou.

isn't it because he ends fools in like 1 minute?
what's the point of comparing the number of fights when u should be comparing the total fight time

 

[BluntForceTrama]

No one answers the phone better than 'Page

 

[Bobby Boulders]

God, striking was laughable, horrible during those times. Almost comedic.
It’s more telling about how bad striking was back then, than about striking defense, which was just as bad.
And people tell us there’s no evolution in the sport compared to 2005-2010 to today lol

This is very true. It keeps evolving, and is getting better and better.