The thing about Nog is you'll never get an honest account of him from Sherdog as he by necessity has to be an all time great to further prop up Fedor's wins over him. If he's not as good as presented then neither is Fedor. Has nothing really to do with objectively analyzing him.
I'm NOT saying he's not a top 5 HW which seems fairly easy to give him, but this thread is complete proof of it when you see people say shit like he beat Sapp and Mirko. Nog fought Sapp under specific rules to give him every advantage like that Sapp couldn't knee or kick a downed opponent like was otherwise allowed in Pride. The piledriver literally happened because Sapp couldn't just knee Nog's face in there off his sprawl like he otherwise would've and so had to come up with something else he could do. As for Mirko, he beat him before Mirko had taken off and not during his actual run, at the same time as Mirko should've lost to Wand but once again didn't due to Pride special rules, and should've been KO'd in the 1st regardless but the round ended.
Not even going to get into people talking about him declining in 2008 when he was still ranked #2. People act like Timmy flooring him was an anomaly in Nog's career. Yet go back and praise him surviving Sapp's pile driver, Mirko's head kick, and others. Make up your minds. Either he's known for his recovery or he's not. Mir KOing Nog was still seen as an impossibility and was an enormous upset at the time. And Nog still came back and beat Randy in his very next fight, looking the best he had in a long time. He was still ranked #2 when Cain KO'd him, that's literally the entire reason Cain got a title shot lmao.
People have enormous rose tinted glasses when it comes to Pride and Nog is no different. Give him a top 5, wherever you want to put him besides #1 as he can't possibly be that, but it is what it is.
