Media Joanna calls Valentina the GOAT

[krelianx]

I agree, val is by far the best all round WMMA fighter we have seen. It is clear she is goat.



Val has 8 defences and still going Nunes had 9 before losing. I also think she was very lucky v cyborg, if you watch it back she wasn't even looking where she was punching and was just wildly swinging and got lucky. Cyborg would have smashed her in a rematch.

Val has no losses at her natural weight class while Nunes has plenty.

I don't think record wise Nunes gets the nod after her loss to Pena.

Nunes has wins against Valentina x 2, Cyborg, Tate, Randamie x 2, Holm, Spencer, Anderson, McMann, and Rousey.

Valentina has wins against Andrade, Joanna, Santos, Pena, Holm, Maia, Chookagian, Murphy...

I think Valentina beat Nunes the second time. But Nunes has still the better list of wins.

 

[fortheo]

What do you base your ranking on, out of curiosity? Mine is based on resume and accomplishments. Also you had a typo and said “Melissa.” Was that supposed to be Miesha? So a quick comparison would be like—

Weili: Joanna x 2, Andrade, Torres and Aguilar plus Danielle Taylor I guess
Titles won: 1 (UFC WSW)
Defenses: 0
Total title wins: 1

Marloes: Roxy, Kaufman, Carmouche, Blencowe, plus Yuki Kondo I guess
Titles won: 1 (Strikeforce WBW)
Defenses: 1
Total title wins: 2

Miesha: Marloes, Carmouche, McMann, Eye, Holm, Renau, plus fighters like Nakai, Gurgel, Finney, Kedzie.
Titles won: 3 (FCF WBW, Strikeforce WBW, UFC WBW)
Defenses: 1 (FCF)
Total title wins: 4

Holly: Pennington x 2, Renau, Ronda, Correia, Megan, Aldana, plus Finney.
Titles won: 1 (UFC WBW)
Title defenses: 0
Total title wins: 1

Kaufman: Davis, Letourneau, Miesha, Baszler, Roxy x2, Carmouche, Smith x 2, Rose-Clark, Kianzad, plus fighters like Hashi, Lehner, and Schneider
Titles won: 3 (HCF WBW, Strikeforce WBW, Invicta WBW)
Title defenses: 2 (HCF and Strikeforce)
Total title wins: 5

So I’m willing to concede that I may have Marloes too high, but I can’t possibly rank Weili higher than Holly and Miesha—especially Miesha. And I have Kaufman too low. People forget how good her resume is, it’s pretty damn good. Kaufman is way above Weili imo. I think I’d still put Marloes above Weili though. Weili doesn’t make the top 10 for me.

As a marloes fan, we must not forget when she won the first "official" WMMA tournament/championship by beating 3 girls in one night in an open weight tournament-- and one of them was undefeated becky Levi (trained with dan severn) who had a 75lb weight advantage over Marloes!

I realize that's hard to qualify with other more modern achievements, but it's a fun fact and cool accomplishment.

 

[JustBleed69]

Weili is my second favorite female fighter (Amanda is the GOAT). But she stumbled. She won a ridiculous 21 or something in a row. Then got caught. Then fought a bad gameplan in the rematch. But she needs a cpl more wins to start to separate her name from some of those. She can and already should have done that, but here we are.

I think she could go down as the SW GOAT. But, she has plenty of work to do for that still.

How did she fight a bad gameplan in the rematch? She arguably won that fight, it was razor close.
Anyways, I'm not really arguing that she is a legend yet or anything, just that she's already done way more than Holly or Meisha imo

 

[Post 2 Decision]

100% yes

She got robbed vs Nunes and Nunes has the size advantage

 

[StonedLemur]

Yes.
In the mind of most she won the second fight with Nunes, and in my opinion Nunes biggest strength is her size and well strength (physicality)

Shevchenko to my knowledge has never had trouble making weight. So to do that well, well abover her weight class adds to it.

Tldr;
Yes.

I've watched that second fight too many times and still can't figure out how Amanda won.

(And for anyone saying Valentina was backing up the whole time....so did Anderson and nobody cried about that... that's what counter fighters do.)

 

[Nathan LaMontagne]

I've watched that second fight too many times and still can't figure out how Amanda won.

(And for anyone saying Valentina was backing up the whole time....so did Anderson and nobody cried about that... that's what counter fighters do.)

It was absolutely ridiculous.

I also remember looking up the stats and they were fucking lies.

Nunes hit her only a small handful of times.

Valentina probably outlanded her 5-1, I'm not even exaggerating.

Anyway thank you sir, I've noticed we have a ton of the same opinions, makes me feel validated. (Ex: we both can't stand Shin O Manlet.)

 

[Brom Bones]

It really depends on your criteria for GOAT status is. For me, it's a simple question of who's the best fighter and that's clearly Val. She's never just said, "Fuck it" and start winging haymakers or flat out given up.

The fact that she fought twice against Amanda, who probably outweighs her by 20 lbs, and (in my opinion) won the 2nd fight proves how good she is. That's like Figgy going up to challenge Volk and arguably winning.

 

[BFoe]

As a marloes fan, we must not forget when she won the first "official" WMMA tournament/championship by beating 3 girls in one night in an open weight tournament-- and one of them was undefeated becky Levi (trained with dan severn) who had a 75lb weight advantage over Marloes!

I realize that's hard to qualify with other more modern achievements, but it's a fun fact and cool accomplishment.

Exactly, and it’s stuff like that which leads to me ranking her where I do. Marloes beat
Harigai/Levi/Yabushita on the same night; she fought Takahashi and Toughill on the same night (went 1-1); and she fought Tamar/Jarecka/Roxy on the same night (went 2-1). Marloes was an old school beast.

Oh yeah, I meant Meisha. Damn autocorrect.
Holly and Meishas resumés aren't anything to write home about imo. Again, imo Holly really only has that one great win over Rousey.
Meisha has a lot of wins, but over meh competition. Weili is going to have a distinct advantage solely for the fact that she fights in the most competitive women's division, which is strawweight. It's more of a quality vs quantity thing to me, and 2 wins over Joanna, a win over Andrade, and an insanely close split decision loss to Rose that she easily could have won are way more impressive than anything Holly or Meisha have ever done.
Meisha is more impressive as a pioneer of WMMA than her actual fight career is, to me anyways.

Wow, I’m honestly kinda surprised to hear you say that after I laid their resumes out. Miesha has won gold in nearly every org she’s competed in. And while it was a different time years ago and major orgs didn’t have WMMA, Julie Kedzie, Elaina Maxwell, Zoila Gurgel, Hitomi Akano, Marloes Coenen, Liz Carmouche, and Holly Holm have all held some type of gold in their careers. Miesha beat all those chicks. I think her resume smokes Weili’s. By a lot, actually.
Julia Budd probably has a better overall resume than Weili.
I’m definitely open to moving some people on my list: Marloes and Holly a bit high, Kaufman a bit too low. But if there were an open slot in the top 10 I’d prob slide Budd in there before Weili Zhang.

Weili’s win over Andrade was very impressive, and Andrade has a great resume herself. But Holly’s win over Ronda is far superior to that, and after that both Weili and Holly don’t have a lot of great stuff. Both have dominant title wins and then lost those belts in their very next fight,

 

[SalvadorAllende]

I think GOAT discussions are pretty stupid but Valentina is for sure the most skilled WMMA fighter I have ever seen.

In my opinion he lost a step already but she is still amazing to watch.

 

[King in the North]

She lost twice to Nunes and did nothing the second fight. Definitely didn’t win the fight, “in the minds of most” or however the first response put it. That is a shockingly stupid response and it has like a dozen likes. Weird.

 

[King in the North]

Yes.
In the mind of most she won the second fight with Nunes, and in my opinion Nunes biggest strength is her size and well strength (physicality)

Shevchenko to my knowledge has never had trouble making weight. So to do that well, well abover her weight class adds to it.

Tldr;
Yes.

She literally did nothing the second fight

 

[ayaandirtyboy]

Skillswise yes, record wise Nunes has the nod.

the record has a terrible black spot not since she quit in her last defense.

you never see the bullet quit

 

[Eric Silva 2.0]

Usually I don't put my 2 cents in for goat talk, but I think for many, like myself, they believe Valentina is the goat skill wise but Nunes is the goat accolade wise. I think Valentina won the 2nd fight 48-47 but I wasn't mad about the decision because she wasn't active enough and let off the gas when she just needed a round to win. I think she's better than Nunes p4p skill wise. I'm also in the group that believes once you've established that you're a great, losing at the end of the career does very little to tarnish your previous accomplishments, unlike some who think someone just always sucked lol.

Edit: previous two posts were when I was writing this, but just adds to what I was trying to say.

"I'm also in the group that believes once you've established that you're great, losing at the end of the career does very little to tarnish your previous accomplishments, unlike some who think someone just always sucked."
The idea that a guy like BJ always sucked because he got beat up and ragdolled by everybody at the end including the dude in the street is ridiculous. I do believe it does take away from his greatness a little bit. The ideas of greatness are nuanced. You have the guys like BJ who get slaughtered in the end on one hand and guys like Khabib and GSP who leave on the early side and won't risk their legacy. It's weird for me because I love BJ and he dropped a couple in notches of greatness but a guy like Muhammed Ali never dropped one bit for me. I know it's a different sport this idea is a tough one even in my own head.

 

[GordonMMARamsey]

She lost twice to Nunes and did nothing the second fight. Definitely didn’t win the fight, “in the minds of most” or however the first response put it. That is a shockingly stupid response and it has like a dozen likes. Weird.

10 media judges scored it for Nunes, 9 scored it for Valentina, 2 called it a draw, and 1 judge gave her the fight.
http://mmadecisions.com/decision/8400/Amanda-Nunes-vs-Valentina-Shevchenko

When that fight ended, a lot of us here thought Nunes lost. She also threw more strikes than Nunes too, which is surprising since she "literally did nothing the second fight"

 

[GordonMMARamsey]

 

[StonedLemur]

It was absolutely ridiculous.

I also remember looking up the stats and they were fucking lies.

Nunes hit her only a small handful of times.

Valentina probably outlanded her 5-1, I'm not even exaggerating.

Anyway thank you sir, I've noticed we have a ton of the same opinions, makes me feel validated. (Ex: we both can't stand Shin O Manlet.)

Yeah those stats are so overinflated it makes you wonder who is doing the counting ffs.
Valentina easily out struck her 4-5 to 1.
She should've been BW champ right there tbh.
We do seem to have the same views on a lot of things, which can't be a bad thing since we're both pretty fuckin awesome sir lol.

O'Malley is like that annoying little brother that thinks he's the shit until someone smashes him and then he becomes humble and cool to be around lol.

Me and you are just waiting for such a hero to arrive sir lmao.