In 2005, Top 3 lightweights were better than the ones in 2021.

JustOnce

Steel Belt
@Steel
Joined
Jan 22, 2015
Messages
25,799
Reaction score
30,904
Oliveira
Porier
Gathje

vs

Gomi
Sakurai - If you don't know, the only guy to have fought Hughes AND Android Silva.
BJ

I really, truly, wholeheartedly, entirely, undoubtedly believe Gomi would have fucking run through Gaethje and dead him. I really think Gomi runs through Poirier too. I know this won't be popular idea, but in 2005 Gomi, the peak Gomi, was pound for pound best fighter on Sherdog alongside Shogun and Fedor.

And BJ is probably the worst style match up you could write up for someone like Oliveira.
 
Last edited:
We'll never know, but my gut is to say the 2005 lightweights looked better than the 2021 lightweights because they were styling on way worse fighters.

I'd pick Gaethje over Gomi any day of the week, but if we were adjusting for evolution over time, it would be close because those guys were freaking awesome.
 
Who's Silva in the 2005 section?

Either way I think best practices changing would make it hard for older generation fighters to succeed against new generation fighters, but I agree that the LWs of the mid-late 2000s were awesome. Deep too, there were so many good lightweights but they were all spread out. That 2008 DREAM Grand Prix was loaded.
 
We'll never know, but my gut is to say the 2005 lightweights looked better than the 2021 lightweights because they were styling on way worse fighters.

I'd pick Gaethje over Gomi any day of the week, but if we were adjusting for evolution over time, it would be close because those guys were freaking awesome.

Agreed on the first part, that older fighters will look better because they're beating on less well-rounded competition.

At the same time, a lot of older fighters also looked WORSE because they were fighting much bigger guys. A lot of the "cans" PRIDE had were blown up modern FWs and LWs fighting LHWs and HWs.

Put Max Holloway, Khabib and Volk against Glover, Jiri and Lewis and they'll suddenly look like cans too.
 
Gomi was an animal when he was fighting for Pride. He was a drunk but he was still young. He had regular coaching and trained with other killers. Perhaps he did have help from the promotion in terms of favoritism and prep time for fights.
 
<JagsKiddingMe>

Blasphemy. Gomi before his drinking problem was a fucking savage. GTFO.

yah-gurl-yas-gurl.gif
 
Back
Top