New method of calculating GOAT status

achoo42

achoo42

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Here's my criteria for calculating how good a champion's resume is:
  • Each title win (not including interim) was scored on a scale of 10, with 10 being an all time great win, and 1 being a complete can.
  • Then up to a 50% bonus for how dominant the win was, rounded to the nearest half point. E.g., 50% for total domination, but no bonus for a close fight.
  • If the fight was controversial I deducted up to 50%. This means deducting points from fights like Reyes vs Jones or Lawler vs Condit which are commonly considered to be robberies.
  • Points can also be deducted for inconclusive wins, fluke wins, and fights that the champion was very close to losing even if they ended up with the finish.
  • Then you add up all the points to measure the greatness of a champion's resume.
  • Every win is scored based on how good it was at the time. For example, Anderson Silva beating a prime Hendo was given 8 points, whereas Bisping beating Hendo 8 years later was only given 5 points.
Here are my personal results on a spreadsheet

This is purely a measure of resume, so it doesn't take into account things like drug test fails, how exciting they were, consecutive wins, or losses. So someone like Randy Couture will score very high despite losing a lot, whereas Khabib will score relatively low despite never losing.

And while I tried to be as fair as possible, it's going to end up being subjective no matter what. So feel free to copy and paste the spreadsheet into your own and fiddle with the numbers.

In any case, this is what came up as my top 30, plus their scores.
1. Jon Jones (129) *149 including non-title fights
2. Georges St. Pierre (119)
3. Anderson Silva (90) *119 including non-title fights
4. Demetrious Johnson (84)
5. José Aldo (76.5) *97.5 including WEC title wins
6. Randy Couture (75.5)
7. Amanda Nunes (73)
8. Matt Hughes (69)
9. Daniel Cormier (63.5)
10. Stipe Miocic (62.5)
11. Alexander Volkanovski (62)
12. Chuck Liddell (61.5)
13. Israel Adesanya (61)
14. BJ Penn (55)
15. Tito Ortiz (53)
16. Kamaru Usman (52)
17. TJ Dillashaw (51.5)
18. Valentina Shevchenko (50)
19. Cain Velasquez (50)
20. Max Holloway (48)
21. Khabib Nurmagomedov (44)
22. Dominick Cruz (43.5) *67 including WEC title wins
23. Henry Cejudo (42)
24. Chris Weidman (42)
25. Joanna Jędrzejczyk (40)
26. Ronda Rousey (39.5)
27. Tyron Woodley (39)
28. Tim Sylvia (37.5)
29. Zhang Weili (35.5)
30. Brock Lesnar (31)

Some takeaways:
  • Adesanya wasn't even close to Silva's resume level.
  • Usman wasn't close to GSP, he was still pretty far from Matt Hughes.
  • Aljamain Sterling is nowhere close to Cruz or Dillashaw.
  • Matt Hughes was a piece of shit but he's consistently underrated in top 10 talks.
  • Khabib is far from a top 10 fighter in terms of resume. He might be an all-time great for how clean and dominant he was, but winning 4 title fights doesn't give you an all-time great resume.
  • Jon Jones has the best resume. Doesn't mean he's the GOAT but it's hard to argue that anyone has a better resume.
And just for fun, the worst champions were:
  • Evan Tanner (6)
  • Vitor Belfort (4.5)
  • Nicco Montaño (4)
  • Germaine de Randamie (4)
  • Bas Rutten (3)
 
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Thats alot of work bro congrats....could work for determining an overall GOAT but it's still highly subjective..in ranking the opponents and title defenses.

The only Objective Divisional GOAT characteristics are as follows

1) Win the title
2) Defend said title against top ranked opponents more times then any champion before you.


That is all.. there's no more objective way to determine it as we are comparing champions from different eras
 
Paolo Delutis said:
Thats alot of work bro congrats....could work for determining an overall GOAT but it's still highly subjective..

The only Objective Divisional GOAT characteristics are as follows

1) Win the title
2) Defend said title against top ranked opponents more times then any champion before you.


That is all.. there's no more objective way to determine it as we are comparing champions from different eras
Click to expand...

True. But if you want to decide using only these two characteristics, you end up with absurd results like ranking Pat Miletich, who had 5 title wins against regional competition, above Holloway, Khabib, Cain, who had 4 title wins against killers and former champs.
 
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Love me some MMA math. Even better when we throw formulas on excel sheets.

That said, any formula that has a dirty greaser, who quit once he had an all time bad robbery win without having the decency of giving a rematch as the number two GOAT is a broken formula.
 
AmericanMMA said:
Love me some MMA math. Even better when we throw formulas on excel sheets.

That said, any formula that has a dirty greaser, who quit once he had an all time bad robbery win without having the decency of giving a rematch as the number two GOAT is a broken formula.
Click to expand...

Yeah but I didn't take into account "greasing", drug test failures, IV use, and things like that. If I did, all the top 3 would have issues.

I did take into account the controversy behind the Hendricks win by deducting points from it.
 
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achoo42 said:
True. But if you want to decide using only these two characteristics, you end up with absurd results like ranking Pat Miletich, who had 5 title wins against bums, above Max Holloway, Khabib, Cain, who have 4 title wins over actual competition.
Click to expand...


Were the title defenses against ranked opponents for Miletich? Then they are the same in relevance..

Recency or improvements in the sport doesnt change the facts at the time in which the fights took place that was the competition level...it isnt Pat's fault he was ahead of his opponents right... he shouldn't be penalized because the competition was different for his era.
.that said id be interested to see if his defenses where against ranked guys...thats why I included that point of reference...

Top 5 contender defenses are worth more then defending against anyone else...
 
Paolo Delutis said:
Were the title defenses against ranked opponents for Miletich
Click to expand...

Pat Miletich's title wins:
1. Mikey Burnett. 4-1 record, 1 UFC win.
2. Jorge Patino. 18-4 record, but all of them were regional fights in Brazil.
3. André Pederneiras. 1-0 record, and it was a single regional fight.
4. John Alessio. 7-3 record, all regional wins.
5. Kenichi Yamamoto, 4-2 record, 2 UFC wins.

So out of 5 title challengers, only two of them had even won any UFC fights. I don't think rankings existed yet for welterweight.

It's not Pat's fault that he had to fight bums but you can't just discount that and say he's better than modern fighters who defend against former champions.
 
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This is really fascinating. I like it. The only thing I'd add is a modifier for PED's, which would bring Jones down quite a bit. Quite frankly Silva would drop a little too
 
My method is much simpler: do they in any way remind you of an actual goat.
So far, Khabib and Khamzat are the top guys, with Islam just a tad behind.

P.S
This was actually a good read TS, nicely done.
 
There never will be a GOAT,there will never be a consensus for criteria,and wether they were "exciting" or what a "complete can" is will always be up for interpretation.
 
achoo42 said:
Pat Miletich's title wins:
1. Mikey Burnett. 4-1 record, 1 UFC win.
2. Jorge Patino. 18-4 record, but all of them were regional fights in Brazil.
3. André Pederneiras. 1-0 record, and it was a single regional fight.
4. John Alessio. 7-3 record, all regional wins.
5. Kenichi Yamamoto, 4-2 record, 2 UFC wins.

So out of 5 title challengers, only two of them had even won any UFC fights. I don't think rankings existed yet for welterweight. It's not Pat's fault that he had to fight bums but you can't just discount that and say he's better than modern fighters who defend against former champions.
Click to expand...
So Pat wouldn't be linked to a GOAT status which ive never heard him be linked in the first place too..

His student Matt and his greatest rival GSP are different stories ... though
 
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WhiteMousse said:
This is really fascinating. I like it. The only thing I'd add is a modifier for PED's, which would bring Jones down quite a bit. Quite frankly Silva would drop a little too
Click to expand...

I don't take PEDs into account because at the end of the day, it's hard to tell who was on PEDs and who wasn't (I think most everybody was).

Like the example of Silva. Silva popped in the Diaz fight but does that mean he was juicing his whole career?

DC never popped but his testosterone levels were 7-10 times higher than a normal person. Does that mean he was natural?

And before USADA it was even easier to avoid popping, so how do you take that into account?
 
my criteria is a little unorthodox, the methods are precise precision though

It goes:

Confirmed Kills
Hairline strength
Bank Account Status
Wife/GF elbow smoothness
Social media Followers
 
achoo42 said:
Here's my criteria for calculating how good a champion's resume is:
  • Each title win (not including interim) was scored on a scale of 10, with 10 being an all time great win, and 1 being a complete can.
  • Then up to a 50% bonus for how dominant the win was, rounded to the nearest half point. E.g., 50% for total domination, but no bonus for a close fight.
  • If the fight was controversial I deducted up to 50%. This means deducting points fights like Reyes vs Jones or Lawler vs Condit which are commonly considered to be robberies.
  • Points can also be deducted for inconclusive wins, fluke wins, and fights that the champion was very close to losing even if they ended up with the finish.
  • Then you add up all the points to measure the greatness of a champion's resume.
  • Every win is scored based on how good it was at the time. For example, Anderson Silva beating a prime Hendo was given 8 points, whereas Bisping beating Hendo 8 years later was only given 5 points.
Here's my results on a spreadsheet

This is purely a measure of resume, so it doesn't take into account things like drug test fails, how exciting they were, consecutive wins, or losses. So someone like Randy Couture will score very high despite losing a lot, whereas Khabib will score relatively low despite never losing.

And while I tried to be as fair as possible, it's going to end up being subjective no matter what. So feel free to copy and paste the spreadsheet into your own and fiddle with the numbers.

In any case, this is what came up as my top 30, plus their scores.
1. Jon Jones (129) *149 including non-title fights
2. Georges St. Pierre (119)
3. Anderson Silva (90) *119 including non-title fights
4. Demetrious Johnson (84)
5. José Aldo (76.5) *97.5 including WEC title wins
6. Randy Couture (75.5)
7. Amanda Nunes (73)
8. Matt Hughes (69)
9. Daniel Cormier (63.5)
10. Stipe Miocic (62.5)
11. Alexander Volkanovski (62)
12. Chuck Liddell (61.5)
13. Israel Adesanya (61)
14. BJ Penn (55)
15. Tito Ortiz (53)
16. Kamaru Usman (52)
17. TJ Dillashaw
18. Valentina Shevchenko (50)
19. Cain Velasquez (50)
20. Max Holloway (48)
21. Khabib Nurmagomedov (44)
22. Dominick Cruz (43.5) *67 including WEC title wins
23. Henry Cejudo (42)
24. Chris Weidman (42)
25. Joanna Jędrzejczyk (40)
26. Ronda Rousey (39.5)
27. Tyron Woodley (39)
28. Tim Sylvia (37.5)
29. Zhang Weili (35.5)
30. Brock Lesnar (31)

Some takeaways:
  • Jon Jones has the best resume. Doesn't mean he's the GOAT but it's hard to argue that anyone has a better resume.
  • Adesanya wasn't even close to Silva's resume level.
  • Usman wasn't close to GSP, he was still pretty far from Matt Hughes.
  • Matt Hughes was a piece of shit but he's consistently underrated in top 10 talks.
  • Khabib is far from a top 10 fighter in terms of resume. He might be an all-time great for how clean and dominant he was, but winning 4 title fights doesn't give you an all-time great resume.
The worst champions were:
  • Evan Tanner (6)
  • Vitor Belfort (4.5)
  • Nicco Montaño (4)
  • Germaine de Randamie (4)
  • Bas Rutten (3)
Click to expand...
Any GOAT list without Fedor on it is wrong.
 
Oregonmma said:
Any GOAT list without Fedor on it is wrong.
Click to expand...

I mean it's pretty clear that we're only discussing the UFC on this list (this is the UFC discussion forum after all).

Pride doesn't hold title defenses the same way as the UFC does so comparing the "title reigns" of Fedor and Wanderlei against UFC champions would be apples and oranges.
 
Still a sense of subjectivity since you're judging primes and controversiality, and IMO only basing this on title wins is a poor choice. Also obv this only applies to the UFC with notes re: WEC (but I totally understand that to do this for every fighter across every organization ever would be a massive undertaking).

That being said, this is a neat quantifiable concept and it'd be cool to see this expanded across all fights and organizations to see exactly where things land in this fashion. Any clue how this method compares/contrasts to FightMatrix's scoring system?
 
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