Five Criteria for GOATness: Record, Dominance, Skill, Cheating, Competence in Judging

Longevity is important too imo.

Also it's unfair to compare guys that fought under Usada to guys that fought in a pre usada era or in a promotion that states you could use steroids in the contract.
 
Masturbin said:
Longevity is important too imo.

Also it's unfair to compare guys that fought under Usada to guys that fought in a pre usada era or in a promotion that states you could use steroids in the contract.
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Well kinda. They still fought guys under the same ruleset who had the same opportunity to dope.
 
Masturbin said:
Longevity is important too imo.

Also it's unfair to compare guys that fought under Usada to guys that fought in a pre usada era or in a promotion that states you could use steroids in the contract.
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This is why I said cheating/peds are a finnicky category, underneath others, and that how one will assess this will vary on not only overt regulation (USADA vs. pre-USADA or orgs that don't test) but also what implications one draws from a fighter having been explicitly caught cheating (should their entire trajectory be discredited? Only the fight(s) they got flagged for?). Not to mention one's belief about whether fighters who haven't been caught cheating actually are doing so (many believe everyone or most are cheating, so not having been caught is just a matter of wits).
 
krelianx said:
PEDs/cheating: Did the fighter have proven PED use in their career? If one cannot assume other fighters were in fact cheating without substantive proof, how does this affect? Some people will say cheating once discredits one's entire record or eligibility for being considered. I am in that camp. Others will claim it only disqualifies consideration on those wins that a person was flagged for. Yet another, more lenient one, will claim that since it is likely everyone or most were cheating, PED flagging is irrelevant.
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If you don't want to include drug test fails, that's fine. But it's a little odd to have that standard when one of the calling cards of great fighters is intelligence when it comes to cheating. Whether it's GSP or Silva or Aldo.
 
Awesome post TS!

The Penn post prime question is the most interesting one for me because there’s no hard cut off for when a prime ends until it becomes obvious to everyone they are shot. Tony Ferguson for example was he done as soon as the Gaethje fight or after the Olives or Benny fight?

Was Penn done after Edgar II?

PED question is also a fun one. I’m in the camp of it doesn’t really matter to me because passing the tests especially Pre USADA is/was basically an IQ test.

Once again great post!
 
Captain_Dammitt said:
I'll go out on a limb here and say skill is what can really separate one GOAT from another, to me at least. DJ and GSP had incredible fight IQ, they would identify your weakness and attack it. Silva and Khabib would force you to fight them in their strengths then you have Jones and Fedor who would beat you at your own game. That to me is the highest form of skill. Fedor out struck the best HW striker at the time in Cro Cop after beat the best grappler in the division in his guard. Jones has done this countless times. Out wrestling and out working DC, Gus saying that Jones knew exactly what to do to stop his movement and footwork on the feet, beating Glover in close range, "Chael Sonnening" Chael Sonnen, there are so many more examples. He even got the better of the exchanges against Gane for a short as it lasted.
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Well said. I can appreciate what OP is doing (trying to allow for all/most angles), but at the end of the day it really is about skill, and that, by it's nature, is not objectively quantifiable. At the same time, when that level of skill results in (impressive) victory after victory of other top competition. . . we really don't need many other parameters, and even if we made them, they'd still not account for everything.
 
Dirtiness of the fighter too should matter, how many eyepokes low blows cage grabs etcetera, plus I think if they have only one ped pop on their record it shouldn’t mean anything, more than one it does

GSP goat hands down no debate and it’s not about how nice he is outside the ring that makes me say that either
 
krelianx said:
Since evaluating things like P4P rankings and GOATness is fairly arbitrary, here are five criteria to evaluate fighters in relation to one another.

Record - This has a few factors. The most obvious one is looking at the number of wins and losses, the quality of competition relative to a given epoch and division depth, and also absolute terms (who overall beat the best quality competition, regardless of quantity). We can evaluate competition in terms of how many ranked wins one had, champions or former champions, P4P ranked fighters, what was the combined record of opponents, and whether the opponents were in their prime or not, among other things.

Also we look at who the fighter has lost to, and whether the losses were avenged or not, and the conditions under which these losses took place, e.g. Fedor's loss to TK was a fluke cut, just as Jones' DQ loss; GSP's loss to Serra was more significant, though he avenged it decisively;, Cain's loss to Werdum was definitively impactful... This category also includes titles won and title defenses: how many titles won, how many title match wins, how many weight classes? How many title defenses did they have? This factor is complicated by the introduction of primes and point in career: should Penn's record after his reign and prime count as significantly? Should pre-prime records be compounded only? Since it is hard to determine with any fair sense just when a prime ends and begins, this makes things difficult and always controversial (e.g. was Fedor past his prime when he lost to Werdum?).

Dominance: How did the fights themselves go? How consistently did the fighter come out on top in a decisive manner? How far ahead of everyone else was he/she, record aside? Khabib is a good example of a fighter that has very few title defenses relative to other fighters, so he does not excel on paper in terms of title reign although he was undefeated. But he was so overwhelmingly dominant in the fights themselves that he is taken to be one of the GOATS. Someone like Jones, who on paper has the best record also has a few controversial decisions (Gus, Santos, Reyes), which make people less certain of things.

Skill: The actual skillset of the fighter. Who was more and better rounded? Who excelled more in actual MMA skills. DJ and GSP are examples of superlative fighters that were extremely well rounded, on top of being dominant and having great records. Someone like Silva or Khabib, while not as well rounded, had superlative skills in a few areas that compensated for weaknesses in others. Someone like Cain was extremely skilled in most places, but didn't have the record to match it up.

A fourth, crucial but controversial one:

PEDs/cheating: Did the fighter have proven PED use in their career? If one cannot assume other fighters were in fact cheating without substantive proof, how does this affect? Some people will say cheating once discredits one's entire record or eligibility for being considered. I am in that camp. Others will claim it only disqualifies consideration on those wins that a person was flagged for. Yet another, more lenient one, will claim that since it is likely everyone or most were cheating, PED flagging is irrelevant.

Yet a fifth, related to record, is more finnicky still:

Incompetence/Competence in Judging: If a fighter has a loss on their record, or multiple losses, as a result of incompetence in judging, corruption, or sheer loopholing, should they be penalized? Should the one unduly rewarded be rewarded? Should terrible decisions be amended? Should we take Diego's loss against Pearson against him? How much does Yan's loss to Aljo via DQ detract from his record?
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TL ; DR

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS OVERALL GOAT THE SPORT HAS TO STOP FOR THAT TO BE DECIDED.

secondly


How to determine divisional GOAT status

1) Win the title
2) Defend said title more times then any other champion that came before you against Top ranked opponents only ..no padding...
3) THAT IS ALL...GOOD DAY!
 
Paolo Delutis said:
TL ; DR

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS OVERALL GOAT THE SPORT HAS TO STOP FOR THAT TO BE DECIDED.

secondly


How to determine divisional GOAT status

1) Win the title
2) Defend said title more times then any other champion that came before you against Top ranked opponents only ..no padding...
3) THAT IS ALL...GOOD DAY!
Click to expand...

Too stupid; ignore button.
 
People literally change their criteria / weight for GOAT depending on who they are arguing for.

It's subjective af and MMA fans often conflate "favorite" with "greatest". I've given up trying to reason with people lol.
 
Their reign of terror matters. If a fighter weren’t the very best in their division for an extended period of time please don’t consider adding them to goat convos
 
krelianx said:
When it was introduced, by whom, and with which motivations, is one series of questions. Another question is if it is a relevant criterion to evaluate a fighter's trajectory relative to other fighters.

I think it is. A simple hypothetical shows this. All other things being equal, the dominant candidate takes the lead: two fighters with the exact same record against the exact competition under exact conditions, but one wins every fight barely while the other is extremely dominant favors the latter. Being dominant adds value. This is a hyperbolic example but it shows it matters, even if in practice it is harder to apply.
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It counts because in the end,almost no one can go through their whole career maintaining the dominance level that he had,en route to the title,winning,and defending it. Here we are,years later,and the guys he beat are still at the top,having hard fights with each other,and the one guy he didnt fight,just got run over by his teammate.

I think GOAT is bullshit,and dont give a shit who is "The greatest of this month"

I think people should just call it like it is and say "the fighter's career that I personally
like the best"
 
Paolo Delutis said:
TL ; DR

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS OVERALL GOAT THE SPORT HAS TO STOP FOR THAT TO BE DECIDED.
Click to expand...
Even if it stopped,it cant be decided. The guys fought in different eras,under different conditions,against different opponents. Even in divisional rankings this is the case.
 
mjfan23 said:
Their reign of terror matters. If a fighter weren’t the very best in their division for an extended period of time please don’t consider adding them to goat convos
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This would be a good thread idea.

Fighters who were considered the best for an extended period,wether they held the belt,had many title defenses or not
 
I especially agree with the skill, more specifically well roundedness, for example guys like GSP and Jones has the most complete skillset that you can't really a find any glaring weaknesses, in their primes they can strike with the ground guy, outwrestle the striker, basically multiple ways to win and elite everywhere.

Whereas other guys like Anderson or Khabib are specialists, they have obvious weaknesses that the right matchup could take them out of their element, Anderson against a high level MMA wrestler with great sub defense (to take him down), or Khabib also against a high level MMA wrestler with good striking (to stuff his takedowns) would give both guys serious problems.
 
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