Anderson silva had a tougher weight class that was more cleaned out as well.
GSP at ww had tougher opponents too, and was just as "cleaned out".
I know haters going to hate on jones, but if you think the shogun and rampage and some others that jon beat are the best versions of those guys you need to watch some older fights.
I wish jones had taken on the mw champ at the time in silva and not chael like gsp did with bj penn when a "lw" moved up to gsp's division for a title shot.
That would be like gsp fighting one of the guys bj beat, and not bj. Imagine the hate gsp would get for fighting one of the lw contenders and not pwning the champ! Chrsit he still gets hate for "only" beating a lw, never mind he was the lw champ and a former ww champ.
Please. Jones is awesome, but he isn't fedor, gsp, or silva yet.
Imagine if gsp had to take on lw contenders, not the champ, but contenders because ww's were too old and not ready for short notice title shots. Jesus, just look at some threads about the ww's at the time DYING for title shots. How good Jon Fitch was and what he had to do for a title shot. That would be like gsp smacking around Jon fitch NOW. Thats what jon jones is doing with the old tired versions of shogun and page. And Im not even shogun or rampage or pride fan, hell I HATE penn, but he was good. Much better then fuckin chael coming up, and I am one of the biggest chael fans you'll find. Look at my old posts. I admit his lhw title shot was a joke. Him taking it wasn't because there were not contenders, there were just contenders turning down title shots.
Cleaned out, please. He broke tito's fucking record, not anderson's or gsp's. Get over this.
I love how people re-write history to suit their agenda. Nobody was calling any of the monsters that Jones beat "washed up" "old" or "over the hill" until Jones wiped the floor with them. (Anderson actually suffered from the same phenomenon during his reign where all of the sudden his division was weak because he was too good for anyone to pose him a challenge)
If you aren't being silly it is pretty clear that Jones' strength of schedule is equal to or greater than any other in MMA history.
GSP fought some very tough opponents, no doubt, but he also fought Hardy, and natural lightweights in BJ and Serra (who KOed him). People love to point out that Jones fought MWs (one of whom was a former LHW champ and HW tourney champ) but rarely note that GSP fought several LWs himself (Sherk, BJ, Serra)
Shogun UFC LHW Champ, Pride MW Gp Champ
Machida UFC LHW Champ
Rashad UFC LHW Champ
Rampage UFC LHW Champ
Vitor UFC LHW Champ, HW tourney Champ, Franklinweight & SuperRumbleweight Champ
Chael- Champion of his own mind
DC - Strikeforce HW Tourney Champ
Glover - unbeaten in 20 fights
Gus
Also it is pretty laughable to say Anderson had a tougher division, I assume that was a joke. His division was sorely underrated because of his dominance, but it was definitely not on the level of the LHW division Jones has torn thru.
as for the records
Anderson 10
GSP 9
Jones 8 - active
he hasn't broken them yet, but he aint far off and he has his toughest challenges behind him.
At what point did Anderson or GSP have their division more cleared out?
GSP always had at least one legit threat lurking since their were other respectable orgs with fighters like Shields, Lombard, then he had Hendricks as an up and comer
Anderson had Jacare out there and Weidman on the way up towards the end. When he went up to 205 there were still contenders at 185 (Okami, Chael)
