When comparing championship runs, one must consider invisible title defences

[Poatan Power]

Flawed compared to GSP? GSP has been submitted, finished by strikes from Serra and had his face rearranged by Hendricks. Khabib has dominated everyone and actually finished his opponents unlike GSP. Khabib’s striking is underrated too. It’s awkward, but he has good power, very good defence and he’s quite unpredictable.

This is such a casual take.

1. "GSP has been submitted and finished by strikes."

You realize GSP was fighting in the UFC in his sixth professional fight and fighting the fucking welterweight GOAT in his eight professional fight? Before his fifteenth professional fight he had fought four UFC champions and beaten 3 of them, and they had a career record of 77-8-2. A win rate of 89%. This was all by the age of 25. Not to mention this was in the early days of MMA where everybody lost at some point. GSP lost less than anyone else during the era and avenged his losses so you sound like an absolute dork.

At the same point in Khabib's career, he was facing 0-1-0 or 2-6-0 cans "dominating them." Yeah no shit. His pre-UFC competition had a 58% winning rate and that's because he beat 1-2 guys with very nice records fighting taxi cab drivers and butchers to accumulate inflated records, otherwise his opponents winning percentage would literally be like 30%. His UFC competition only had a 67-68% win rate. GSP's strength of competition has always been much stronger throughout his career and he still dominated his competition and only improved as he went on.

2. "Had his face rearranged by Hendricks."

Boohoo, GSP had a close fight with a roided up Hendricks in his ninth title defense. In case you lost count, he was 32 (you know, when Khabib retired) and already had triple the title defenses as Khabib and faced much better competition including beating multiple champions. Then he came back and won a title at a higher weight class while Khabib cried all the way home because he couldn't even make weight consistently. Not. Even. Close.

3. "Khabib has dominated everyone and actually finished his opponents unlike GSP."

Khabib finished 7 of 13 fights in the UFC for 54%. GSP finished 9/21 in the UFC for 43%. Neither one of those are impressive but you citing Khabib as a finisher is fucking hilarious and shows you know jack shit. By the way, GSP won 10 fights (all title fights) in 5 years from 2008-2013. Khabib had 13 total fights and basically took 10 years (January 2012-October 2020) to get them in. He had 4 title fights in 3 fucking calendar years.

4. "Khabib’s striking is underrated too. It’s awkward, but he has good power, very good defence and he’s quite unpredictable."

You sound like a girl explaining what she sees in football who's never watched before. You have no idea what you're talking about or what you're looking at. Any striking success Khabib had was because he'd feint grappling to make an opening. His striking was pedestrian and GSP would mop the floor with him on the feet. If you can't see that I can't help you because you're an absolute buffoon. Michael fucking Johnson pieced Khabib up on the feet and Khabib instantly knew he had only one path to victory because he'd get KTFO. GSP would have jabbed Michael Johnson into facial reconstruction.

Imagine coming into this topic and posting such a retarded take when Khabib literally won the title by getting a decision over the #15 ranked lightweight in the world and then defending against coke fiend Conor, and he actually lost a round to him. GSP won the title from the welterweight GOAT and defended it 9 times, Khabib won the title from somebody barely employed by the UFC and then defended it against Conor and 2 guys that never won anything. Do you even fucking realize GSP beat the LW GOAT and WW GOAT within months of each other and at the end of his career won the middleweight title too?!? What fucking rock do you live under?!

 

[chinarice]

I'm sick........

Sick of the lack of distinction between résumé and being the overall better fighter.

This topic is often brought up during Khabib vs. JBJ GOAT debates. The argument is that Khabib is the more dominant fighter but JBJ has the superior record - Johny's 15 title fights to Khabib's 4. However, when comparing their records, why does no one ever mention Khabib's invisible title fights?

Taking into consideration invisible title fights, Khabib's record is more like 35-0. Most of JBJ's title fights are visible, so his true record matches his technical record (27-1).

What is an 'invisible title fight'? It's essentially a hypothetical title fight that you can rule as being a guaranteed win if it were to happen. For example, Khabib didn't fight Dan Hooker, but if he did he would definitely have won that, so we can count it as an invisible title fight. Oliveira technically wouldn't be an invisible title fight, since that would have likely been more competitive.

If Usman didn't fight Masvidal, Masvidal would have been an invisible title fight. This is an example of an invisible turned visible title fight. JBJ has many of these since he fought both the very best and some of the leastest best.

Caution must be taken when counting title fights. It can only be ranked fighters during a champion's title reign. Also, until we see JBJ vs Stripe, we can't count any HW invisible title fights for JBJ since we don't know how good he truly is at HW.

This may be even more ridiculous than pound for pound lol grats bud