He fought 11 times in Pride after winning the title and a total of 14 times in Pride. What this proves is that while in Pride Fedor fought pretty much all top competition in major organizations. It's when he was outside of Pride that the comp was subpar. But in Pride, of those 14 fights he had 11 were vs top 10 opponents. When he went to Affliction it was all top 5 HWs in Sylvia, Arlovski and suppose to be Barnett but got axed. So when Fedor is in a top promotion it's majority or only top competition. Same with SF.
Take his first 6 fights in Rings after the loss to TK, he was an up and coming fighter so you can't expect him to be really fight top comp in his first 10 fights. Those are not relevant and you can't knock his streak for those fights. It's like take Khabib, 29 fight win streak, 16 are supbar fighters that no one has heard off, the first 5 in the UFC are average guys, for Khabib of his 29 wins, only 7 are higher comp. Point is you're never going to get huge winning streak that's not padded in some way with lesser comp. Any long streak will have that. Renan Barao, Miguel Torres, Rich Franklin, Anderson Silva etc. So it's not so much they're records are padded, it's just a consistent variable that is part of any long winning streak. The best one I can think of is Jon Jones, take away the Hammil BS DQ and the NC to Cormier, 26 fight win streak. But Jon even has a dozen names on there that are subpar. If were gonna consider Fedors fights in Rings you gotta consider Jon's earlier fights as well.
So the point is that everyone is going to have names that pad their record. And that's just a part of the sport. No one is ever going to have a 20+ win streak with all big names. It's part of everyones win streak and yes, some will have more than others. So it is excusable if it happens cause it happens to everyone.
And yes....Gary was top 10
I am pretty certain he was #9 on some rankings.
