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But Heath Herring, who beat Kongo, and was crushed by CC, apparently is.
lol. UFC fanboys are the dumbest of dumb.
Is Cheick Kongo a top 10 HW of all time?
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But Heath Herring, who beat Kongo, and was crushed by CC, apparently is.
lol. UFC fanboys are the dumbest of dumb.
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That was an aside. You totally missed the main point: Cro-Cop came in with all sorts of hype and failed miserably to live up to it. Supposedly the 2006 Pride Conflict Absolute winner Cro-Cop was the most dangerous HW ever. Less than a year later he has an uninspiring win over Eddie Sanchez (supposed to be an easy tune-up fight) and losses to Gonzaga and Kongo. You can't blame that on "being washed up" either...human physiology doesn't work like that.
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Beating Kongo doesn’t mean you’re a high level fighter. Losing to him certainly means you’re not one. That’s the point, smart guy.
And yeah, you sure you want to talk about Heath? A ranked Pride fighter that was literally rode on top of by a guy with two pro fights. Not helping your case. Oh but wait, let me guess, he was out of his “prime” too.
Different rules, and cage is totally different than ring. You may be champion in taekwondo, and then you switch to karate or muay thai, and then you don't have the same success because it is a different game.
Round octagon with 750 ft2 surface allows a lot more evading and distance than square ring with 4 corners and 400 ft2 surface. Rules are totally different with long fence clinching and stalling in cage, 5 elastic ropes are totally different than head high wire fence. And unified rules are generally set in favour of wrestling. All that helped Cro Cop's opponents in UFC.
Cro Cop also had 50+ pro fights before coming to UFC, and now we see that JDS is on the way down with 28, and UFC marketing new breed hype jobs Velasquez, Lesnar and Carwin are gone and finished with 10-15 fights.
But anyway, PRIDE was the place to prove that you are top quality during Cro Cop's prime, not UFC. And he has done that.
Still same brand and great accomplishment and quality tournament.
Badr Hari was there, Zhuravlev won Glory interim LHW title, Londt won Glory HW contender tournament, Samedov is undefeated since 2013 absolutely top fighter, Gerges and Laschenko were quality. Miller became top 5 HW boxer.
UFC was not the same as today when Arlovski, Mir, Sylvia, Couture won it, and nobody says that they are fake UFC champions and that their titles are not worthy.
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Cheick is not a top 10 hw
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I don't know why but these rankings are genuinely upsetting me. I think I have some fairly unpopular ideas about the sport as far as I've seen it since I first joined Sherdog.
However, I can see where you're coming from in regards to Kongo's ranking. If we are going with the TS' standard that anyone who popped during their career is disqualified then I could MAYBE see top 15.
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As I said earlier, that only makes sense if you add some rule like "Must have fought at least 3 times under USADA testing" or something. You can't throw out guys like Werdum and JDS (busted after their primes and extensively tested under USADA) with guys who fought primarily in non-testing Pride, in Scott Coker orgs (not much different than Pride) or earlier UFCs.
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Well given it was basically Heath's last fight, yes lol.
Overeem, a mediocre PRIDE guy beat the piss out of that guy with two pro fights, causing him to run from the sport lol. Was Brock past his prime 5 fights into it
?
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Well given it was basically Heath's last fight, yes lol.
Overeem, a mediocre PRIDE guy beat the piss out of that guy with two pro fights, causing him to run from the sport lol. Was Brock past his prime 5 fights into it
Because Reem didn’t improve after Pride or anything.... the guy literally gained 40lbs of muscle. And with Brock we had an legitimate medical reason for his fall off, not some “well he lost therefore he’s out of his prime” bs. You have no problem arguing Shogun’s surgeries led to his humiliating debut I’m sure.
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Exactly. Even now, it's not consistent.
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Oh yeah. A consistent them here is that Anderson and Chuck Liddell (both lost belts at age 37-38) had no excuse for losing..they obviously just "weren't that good" and were still in their primes when they lost. And GSP (same ACL injuries as Shogun, but at a much older age) should come back and fight Usman, Khabib and Israel if he wants GOAT consideration. But Cro-Cop, Fedor and Big Nog? All three left their primes in their early 30s and no one is allowed to question it!!
And of course 41-year old Cormier has absolutely no excuse for losing to Stipe (despite a lifetime of wear-and-tear from wrestling at the highest levels and MMA).
Top 10 specimen for sure. Like most heavyweights he’s not that specialHypothetically lets remove any HW that has failed a drug test since Kongo never has and I know some people will say failing a drug test should take you off of an all time greats list. In doing so would this rank Kongo in your top 10 HW of all time? I believe he would be top 10 if this were the case. He is now 44 and has had a hell of a career after his UFC run. A nice chunk of his losses are split decisions too.
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Herring was 30 years old when he decided to leave MMA and pursue poker and other interests. His retirement after the Lesnar fight wasn't about age or injuries....but maybe the reality that he'd never be champ of any major org had something to do with it. Of course, the nostalgists will say 30 is actually 50 in Pride years or some other garbage.
