"Figures don't Lie but Liars can figure."
Kenny Florian
Fedor fought in a completely different era. Many of his opponents had glaring holes in their game. Schlit and Hunt were pure kickboxers for example. Royce Gracie was amazing when nobody else had BJJ. Title defenses? Defended Pride 3 times but fought 8 times. Defended WAMMA 2x but one was Brett Rogers!!!
Stipe and Fedor fought in completely different Eras and IMO what Fedor did was amazing. What he did Stipe may not have been able to do. Winning 16 in a row, a NC and then 11 in a row is hard to do. Maybe even head to head Fedor would beat Stipe. However Denis Hallman beat Matt Hughes twice. Did he have the better career?
Fedor never did what Stipe did. Fight top competition, fighting top competition CONSISTENTLY. Show me where Stipe is fighting cans? Fedor started judo and sambo as a child so his MMA transition was easy with Sambo being virtually MMA. Stipe was playing baseball at the age Fedor was already in combat sports. Fedor never fought consistenly against top level MMA fighters and when he did he lost. At age 34 Fedor lost to Werdum, Bigfoot and MW Dan Henderson. At the same age Stipe KO's Hunt, Arlovski, Werdum, Overeem & JDS in a row. Then beat Francis in a 5 round domination. Show me a streak in Fedor's resume that compares?
Yet as we’ve seen, Fedor fought good competition more often than Stipe did if you break their careers down year by year.
We’ve covered a lot of things, so I’m just going to bullet-point some thoughts here.
—There’s validity to saying they fought in diff eras, more specifically different MMA business models (JMMA vs UFC). So sure, it’s tough to find a 6 fight streak where Fedor wasn’t taking another fight in RINGS, Yarrenoka, Inoki-Bom-Ba-Ye, or fought someone not in the top 10. The flip side is that Stipe wasn’t fighting 4-5x a year, wasn’t fighting tournaments, wasn’t fighting multiple opponents in the same night, wasn’t fighting in 10-minute first rounds, and wasn’t fighting under a ruleset where soccer kicks, knees, and stomps to the head of a grounded opponent were legal.
—I think it’s telling that this win streak of Stipe’s you mentioned includes guys on Fedor’s resume. The 2016 version of Arlovski?? The 2015 version of Hunt? Even Overeem, who I’m a huge fan of, was nowhere near peak form in 2016. Even the 2017 version of JDS wasn’t so hot, but we know what happened when Stipe fought the 2014 version—he dropped 3 if not 4 of the 5 rounds to JDS in that fight.
—All that fight mileage of Fedor’s matters. In a diff post, I saw you talking about Fedor’s losses at age 33 vs Stipe’s wins at age 33. But Fedor started fighting in MMA when he was 23 or so; Stipe was 28. They were in very different places at age 33. Fedor’s losses were in his 34th, 35th, and 36th pro fights. We can’t look at Stipe’s, because after 14 years in MMA he
still doesn’t have anywhere near that many fights.
Fedor fought as many total fights as Stipe has fought, in the first 6 years of his career. I mean, that’s insane.
—I think there’s some bias in criticizing opponents like Schilt as having glaring holes in their game. Isn’t that true of Ngannou in the first Stipe fight? And yet, Stipe is praised for putting on a master class, you called it a “5 round domination”—but when Fedor does the same thing to Schilt, you criticize it.
—Your assessment of Stipe just playing baseball vs Fedor’s judo and sambo seems a bit dishonest. Stipe wasn’t an NCAA Div 1 wrestler? He didn’t train MMA, then switch to boxing, and box Golden Gloves before switching back to MMA to go pro? Of course he did.
—When comparing accolades, Stipe is fortunate that JMMA didn’t make every fight a title defense. At the very least, Coleman and Randleman would’ve been title defense worthy, and had they been Fedor would’ve had 7 total HW title defenses in one undefeated run, which would be way out of reach of most HWs. The 5 he has now in that run are a record that has never been matched or broken.
—I don’t think your Dennis Hallman analogy holds up here. Fedor is the one with more ranked wins, title wins, and title defenses. And that’s not even mentioning his RINGS and PRIDE tournament belts.
When we rank the best HWs of all time, Stipe is competing with Nog for the #2 spot. Neither are close to Fedor, who easily has the best HW resume of all time, and in fact has a resume so good that maybe only GSP or Jones are even in the conversation to have a better one.
