I think there are many ways to frame the GOAT convo as there are so many variables....like Andy;s whole career is hot and cold but he is like Cro Cop, in the sense that when he was functioning on ALL cylinders and in the flow, he was just jaw dropping to watch. Then, you have guys like GSP who have been really consistent but lack the jaw dropping awesomeness that other fighters have at time.
We must take into that some fighters may have like a kind of bi-polar, like any other type of artists, who can produce just amazing work and then on other days not such great work. To me, the Cro Cop that won the Pride GP or even the one from the second round of Rizin that was warmed up, is just on a different level and could KO any man that ever lived....unfortunately with Cro Cop or even like a Cerrone or Overeem, they can just be head cases on other nights and cant get going.
Also PED's: I dont think anyone would deny that Ubereem would be the favorite over Randy Couture and even the most prime Fedor (or even Jones), yet we dont put Overeem in any GOAT discussions. I would honestly even favor TRTitor over the best Andy, even tho we dont think Vitor is better than Andy on the whole.
Fighting is just weird and is more dependant on a wide litany of issues more so than any other sport. P4P talks are almost as pointless as GOAT talks but for my money, FEdor has got to be the GOAT: fought the best in his day, was consistent, was clean (atleast never failed a test) and fought at the highest weight classes while being a smaller man.