TO the people who've mentioned Nog, Pride HW's the golden age of HW's, this pains me to say as a lover of BJJ and a competitive grappler myself, but Tai Tuivasa destroy any version of Nog or Barnett. We know that in MMA< and in fact all sports, that as the sport grows older it advances more, todays best guys are better than a decade ago's best guys, a lot better than 2 decades ago. ANd it's not even a matter of technique (which is proboly the variable that changes the least over time) but nutrition, modern sports medicine (PED's, rehydration) periodization of training, specialty, a more narrowd focus, larger athlete pool. The barrier to entry now is just much higher.
And while it's impossable to quantify or judge if modern athletes out perform previous eras, there are some things that can and have been recorded properly;
Most discuss throwing records for the greatest mark.
the Golf longest drives in history (granted that the majority of record holder here are from decades ago),
NBA career free throw record holders
NBA most 3 pointers all time (which belongs to Steph Curry, as does the career FTP
most of the top 5-top 10 in each of these are dominated by years closer to the present. but in the spirit of transparency, some of the records are still half a century old. But, again, in the case of the NBA, these are not just records in the gym, they're achieved against resisting opponents (who, by my theory, are also better)
I love stories of older athletes who are still active in Pro sports. Like, if i had to write a masters degree thesis on something, it would be on that. Lebron, TOm Brady,
this lady. But that's wholly different than thinkinh the athletes of yesterday are superior -a real laughable take - or even competitive with todays. The dominant HW's of the early 2000's were, by todays standards, guys who should be cutting weight to fight at LHW. about a decade sgo there was this line repeated ad nauseam on here that the "Best HW's were guys that weight in at the mid 230's." Sure there's a point of diminshing returns, but looking at todays climate its pretty clear that the guys with some talent that are solid and 250-the HW limit usually whoop guys who are more talented/skilled but give up 20lbs of mass.
I know this is long, but one other thing thats been bothering me on here for almost 10 years. siunce i started reading this forum in probobly 2008, ive been seeing this line repeated ad nauseam "there's not ss many good HW's in MMA because guys that big usually choose a conventional sport because it pays better" IMO that's such a bullshit, lazy, lack of any - let alone critical - thought saying...
because it implies that the talented 200+ pound athletes out there chose their sport either a) after they grew into their adult man size or b)chopse their port based on what they were likely to go pro in. In both cases this is dumb; people choose their desired sport because that's what they happened to become the best at growing up playing. Lebron didn't "choose basketball because he knew he was going to be big and it would make him rich" Basketball CHOSE him, and it chose him because thats what he probboly liked the best as a kid. ya know, when you can put 8 hours a dsay into a hobbie. Colin Kapernick. He was also very good at baseball, could of pursued it harder and made it to the majors. But he went the NFL route; not because, though, thats where he could of made more money, but because... he was also good at it! Do you think if he discovered he REALLY wanted to go in the NBA an in 11th grade decided to shift his focus to playing b-ball, he could have just walked on the team? hell no. He had been throwing and playing baseball and football ssince he was a boy. Long before he ever knew he was going to be big, or hve the skill to be a pro. Remember when Michael Jordan played baseball? by this sherdog theory that guys "pick their sport" he should have been able to walk onto the field and have a mediocre MLB csareer. But that wasn't the case, and not because of any lack of sthleticism, or desire, but because he hadn't been playing baseball with the concentration required to be pro. Now thjat said the barrier to entry to MMA is a lot lower thsn pro sports and there are guys who, in their late 20's or 30's decided they wanted to get into MMA partly because they thought they had a goo0d chance of making it. But for each of them, there is also a guy COMING from an established career in another pro sport who just, for whatever reason, csnt translate their athleticism to MMA (Greg Hardy, first that comes to mind) EVery young athletes WANTS to be pro, but actually achieving it is a result of a mind boggling amount of factors - luck being a huge one - and to imply that an athlete has a choice in what they are going to excel at based on what the sport pays and some knowledge that they know theyre going to be of a certain size. Like, thinking back, can any of you recall standout youth athletes in any sport who said "I am as good as i am because there's a liklier chance that i'll make it in X sport." NO. NOT AT ALL! they just found out vis trial and error what sport they enjoyed the msot and then got the bug and couldn't put the ball down.
Sorry for the long post, ive tried to make the point on here over the decade and a half hoping one day it would be read and really that id be able to put it into words the right way. I can never seem to elaborate my point commensurate to how strongly i feel opposed to the aforementioned.