Who here doesn't think Fedor Emelianenko is not ranked in the top 5 MMA fighters of all-time?

[markg171]

The problem with a guaranteed "top 5" designation is that

1. Jones
2. GSP
3. Silva
4. Fedor
5. Mighty Mouse
6. Aldo

Are all somewhat interchangeable and at least largely unmoveable as being in the top 6. Narrowing it down top 5 requires you removing 1 of them and there are (mostly) arguments for or against anybody to get your top 5. It's a much harder sell than asking if ALL of them are top 6 which will get you like 95% of MMA fans to agree with that Fedor's probably in that category instead of asking if he's top 5 where someone might reasonably list any of the above above him.

Personally I'd list them more or less like I did where Aldo is top 6 and therefore Fedor does fall in the top 5, but wouldn't particularly argue if anybody argues differently about "which" of them falls to 6. Yeah I think Jones and GSP at least need to be excluded from being potentially #6, but I think it's fairly obvious that Aldo and MM are the lower ended ones that you should argue about.

Or just say we have a "Top 6 Mt. Rushmore" in MMA until we have a 7th who clearly deserves inclusion among the elite of the elite.

 

[markg171]

It could be qualified by divisions though, couldn’t it? Greatest Heavyweight of All Time, Greatest Middleweight of All Time, etc.

The very obviously problem with narrowing things down to division only is that some fighters have achieved great accomplishments in other divisions too and it's obviously unfair to punish their all time standing by not factoring that and instead arguing they need to be separately ranked at those weights.

I think *some* HWs are in the unfortunate position that they simply *couldn't* have ever achieved accolades in other divisions (i.e Brock who could never make 205) and that shouldn't necessarily weigh for or against them, but also don't think that necesssarily applies to someone like Fedor. He could've dropped down to 205 and tried for a 2nd belt in Pride or Strikeforce, or hell even Bellator. Also, but his strength at HW is also hindered by his own losses and career choice. He's probably the GOAT HW sure, but not being the GOAT MMA is his fault for never winning the UFC belt or even Bellator or Strikeforce belts which would've helped his case even just by getting addition HW accolades.

GOAT of a weight class is an enormously good accomplishment but if that's *solely* your claim to fame you need irrefutable evidence and accomplishments for being the overall MMA GOAT.

 

[markg171]

He unfortunately stayed too long, much like Liddell, which will taint the aura they once had, that some fans might not have even witnessed. Like their armor just got shattered.

It's crazy at how fast the chin left them, once they got cracked. Went from getting KO'd being a damn near impossibility, to a probability within a few fights.

Fedor didn't stay too long though. His power, speed, grappling, and overall physicalness stayed strong his whole career until the end. He retained all the tools to remain relatively successful across his older age and eliminate most of his losses, especially against the likes of people like old man Ryan Bader who should've been good matchups that would've easily let him become a Bellator HW Champ late in his career.

Fedor fans love to pretend his problem wasn't that he fought extremely stupidly, predictable, and reckless in his later career. The Bellator commenators literally called the shot that Bader KO'd him with and then Bader himself confirmed he'd seen it reviewing tape and practiced for it. Fedor was leaving holes viewable to anybody who analyzed him. It had nothing to do with age or prime, as did most of his losses before this too. Fedor would make dumb mistakes and his fans would instead blame it on his "prime" leaving him instead of fighting poorly instead of like the veteran he was and not making them.

It's honestly the Frankie Edgar problem where everybody blames his latter losses on just his chin leaving him instead of Frankie always moving the same. He was still technical and speedy to the end, but never changed things up so everybody figured him out that it didn't matter if he still moved well right to where they were expecting him. The same thing happened to Fedor. Move well where they think you will = countered and KO'd.

(and that's not even talking about if he just fought a hell of a lot more patiently like he did against Rampage and Johnston he'd have guranteed eliminated at least some losses from not running into dumb mistakes like he did.)

 

[volcom5]

Fedor beat three K-1 World Champions (Cro Cop, Semmy Schilt, Hunt)
Fedor beat two ADCC World Champions (Jeff Monson & Ricardo Arona)
Fedor beat two Judo World Champions (Satoshi Ishii & Naoya Ogawa)
Fedor beat 7 UFC champions (Nog, Randleman, Coleman, Arlovski, Sylvia, Rampage, Mir)

It looks good on paper when you say [insert fighter] beat a K1 world champion, Judo Champion, ADCC Champion etc. but people tend to forget or how he beat those champions. Fedor was beating most of these champions where they were the weakest, while fighters like GSP & Jones truly beat their opponents at their own game.

Of those UFC champions, he beat two of them twice.

Noguiera was never UFC Champion and Coleman was 40yr old out of his prime who didn’t have a meaningful win since 2000(they fought in 2004).

Fedor has proved that he can stand in front of either the best kickboxers of all time,

Only fight he proved he can stand with the best kickboxers is the Cro Cop fight which was very impressive given Cro Cop put it all together as a MMA Fighter at the time, against Schilt fight was dictated on the ground from the opening rounds & against Hunt, Hunt was getting the best of Fedor in the standup which forced Fedor to control the fight on the ground and eventually win via submission against a Hunt who was 7 fights into his career.

the best grapplers of all time, and the best MMA fighters of all time and he will still beat them.

Best grapplers he fought was Noguiera and Arona, beating Noguiera the way he did on the ground and stand up was great, but the fight with Arona he arguably lost and although he won against Lindland, he struggled on the ground and comfortably beat Sonnen in both stand up and the ground, both fighters were smaller than Fedor also. Against Mir and Monson both fights were won on the feet, with minimal to no grappling.

MMA was basically still in its childhood stage, but Fedor was the GOAT of that period. You can't always compare him to current fighters, as the sport was still in early form of its evolution.

While I agree MMA was young and essentially still is at this point and time, the period Fedor fought in, fighters were already becoming well rounded the problem is they weren’t in the Heavyweight division. We actually can compare him to other fighters because the fighters he is against in the GOAT rankings is of his generation, fighters like GSP, Aldo, A.Silva. Jones is the only one you could say is in the bridge between being in the aforementioned fighters generation towards modern day fighters.

The problem with the comparisons with Fedor & modern day fighters like Merabs, Topurias, Nurmagomedov, Mcgregors etc is that Fedor fans tend to be dishonest and a double standard when it comes to him, they will diminish every modern fighters accomplishments & wins with the overused trope of their opponents “being out of their prime.” or put Fedors double digit win streak as the trump card, but fail or cowardly omit Fedors strength of competition & consistency of it, there’s just a lot of smoke and mirrors when it comes to how Fedor fans prop him up as the #1 GOAT when in reality he’s not in the top 3, that is Jones, GSP and A.Silva. A few fighters has already surpassed Fedor, Merab being one of them.

 

[Ludwig von Mises]

It looks good on paper when you say [insert fighter] beat a K1 world champion, Judo Champion, ADCC Champion etc. but people tend to forget or how he beat those champions. Fedor was beating most of these champions where they were the weakest, while fighters like GSP & Jones truly beat their opponents at their own game.

Noguiera was never UFC Champion and Coleman was 40yr old out of his prime who didn’t have a meaningful win since 2000(they fought in 2004).

Only fight he proved he can stand with the best kickboxers is the Cro Cop fight which was very impressive given Cro Cop put it all together as a MMA Fighter at the time, against Schilt fight was dictated on the ground from the opening rounds & against Hunt, Hunt was getting the best of Fedor in the standup which forced Fedor to control the fight on the ground and eventually win via submission against a Hunt who was 7 fights into his career.

Best grapplers he fought was Noguiera and Arona, beating Noguiera the way he did on the ground and stand up was great, but the fight with Arona he arguably lost and although he won against Lindland, he struggled on the ground and comfortably beat Sonnen in both stand up and the ground, both fighters were smaller than Fedor also. Against Mir and Monson both fights were won on the feet, with minimal to no grappling.

While I agree MMA was young and essentially still is at this point and time, the period Fedor fought in, fighters were already becoming well rounded the problem is they weren’t in the Heavyweight division. We actually can compare him to other fighters because the fighters he is against in the GOAT rankings is of his generation, fighters like GSP, Aldo, A.Silva. Jones is the only one you could say is in the bridge between being in the aforementioned fighters generation towards modern day fighters.

The problem with the comparisons with Fedor & modern day fighters like Merabs, Topurias, Nurmagomedov, Mcgregors etc is that Fedor fans tend to be dishonest and a double standard when it comes to him, they will diminish every modern fighters accomplishments & wins with the overused trope of their opponents “being out of their prime.” or put Fedors double digit win streak as the trump card, but fail or cowardly omit Fedors strength of competition & consistency of it, there’s just a lot of smoke and mirrors when it comes to how Fedor fans prop him up as the #1 GOAT when in reality he’s not in the top 3, that is Jones, GSP and A.Silva. A few fighters has already surpassed Fedor, Merab being one of them.

Big Nog was a UFC champion and a Pride HW champion you imbecile.

Coleman was coming off a win over Shogun was top 5 P4P at the time.

Lol @ Merab surpassing Fedor.

You're such a piece of garbage lmfaooo

Internet loser scum

 

[volcom5]

Big Nog was a UFC champion and a Pride HW champion you imbecile.

He wasn’t a UFC Champion.

Coleman was coming off a win over Shogun was top 5 P4P at the time.

Lol, you consider that a win?

Lol @ Merab surpassing Fedor.

Fedor has not been in any realistic GOAT rankings or position since 2015, only lying, dishonest delusional fans like you and @BowserJr are the ones still trying to skew and manipulate his career while diminishing others.

Merab has surpassed Fedor vis strength of competition consistently.

You're such a piece of garbage lmfaooo

Internet loser scum

That’s all you got? you’re pretty fucking pathetic.

 

[volcom5]

close to a majority think GSP is the GOAT even though that loss should disqualify him.

If that loss to Serra disqualify GSP as a GOAT, then Fedor Emelianenko winning against Zuluzinho should disqualify him.

 

[Rampage_Jackson]

He's in my top 1 so I voted other to be cheeky even though top 1 is obviously in the top 5


I was going to shit on the "not in my top 5" crew and then saw there was a "not in my top 10" crew lmfao. Grow up, trolling is such an unbecoming look.

 

[Do better]

B

I saw someone say in another thread, that Fedor is not even in the top 5 all-time.

Made me wonder how many people think he's not in that exclusive group.

So I like to see what the numbers will be like.

Brett Roger's was beating him, that eliminates him. Top 10 though

 

[Marko Atanasovik]

Barely top 5 heavyweights.

 

[Intermission]

If that loss to Serra disqualify GSP as a GOAT,

it should. it proves so many fighters would beat him that he never faced.

 

[KillerIsBack V2]

He was the GOAT of Pride. That's about all I'll give him.

The ring and the cage made and broke guys like Nog, Crocop and Fedor as did the different rule set. They just didn't translate.

Pride’s best always beat the UFC champs prime for prime…

Fedor embarrassed Tim in half a min…
Rampage destroyed Chuck twice…
Overeem sent Brock back to WWE in half a round

Where do you people get these opinions?

 

[volcom5]

Pride’s best always beat the UFC champs prime for prime…

Prime for Prime doesn’t really work because it’s all dependent on the level of cope and opinion on the fighters prime. In the end Pride and UFC fighters exchanged wins & losses, saying Pride ALWAYS beat the UFC champs is just untrue.

Fedor embarrassed Tim in half a min…
Rampage destroyed Chuck twice…
Overeem sent Brock back to WWE in half a round

Where do you people get these opinions?

Ortiz best Wanderlei
Bj Penn smashed Takanori Gomi
Forrest beat Shogun Rua & Rampage Jackson
Gonzaga smashed Cro Cop
JDS sent Werdum packing
Liddell beat Overeem
Mir beat Noguiera twice

If Fedor didn’t duck the UFC his record would just as spotty as his peers.

 

[volcom5]

it should. it proves so many fighters would beat him that he never faced.

what fighters in his weight has he never faced while he was fighting? GSP literally fought everyone available and top ranked elite fighters. The loss to Serra, he got caught hard, early on and fast, fighters get caught all the time, in this case a rematch occurred showing GSP is the far better fighter.

 

[BFoe]

Fedor has not been in any realistic GOAT rankings or position since 2015, only lying, dishonest delusional fans like you and @BowserJr are the ones still trying to skew and manipulate his career while diminishing others.

Merab has surpassed Fedor vis strength of competition consistently.

Strength of competition as measured by what, out of curiosity? How many ranked wins does Merab have? 6 or 7 maybe? And he’s already got 5 losses?

You keep mentioning fights like Zulu, but Fedor’s run had 11-12 ranked wins, 0 losses. It’s difficult to compare totally different weight classes, especially when HW is involved— but not only has Merab not surpassed Fedor’s metrics, he’s not really even all that close. I don’t really see a good argument to see that he has except to just say “oh, I think fighters today are just better, therefore I don’t care if Merab is 4-5 ranked wins away and has 5 losses to Fedor’s 0,” and that’s just silly recency bias.

 

[HereticBD]

Fedor didn't stay too long though. His power, speed, grappling, and overall physicalness stayed strong his whole career until the end. He retained all the tools to remain relatively successful across his older age and eliminate most of his losses, especially against the likes of people like old man Ryan Bader who should've been good matchups that would've easily let him become a Bellator HW Champ late in his career.

Fedor fans love to pretend his problem wasn't that he fought extremely stupidly, predictable, and reckless in his later career. The Bellator commenators literally called the shot that Bader KO'd him with and then Bader himself confirmed he'd seen it reviewing tape and practiced for it. Fedor was leaving holes viewable to anybody who analyzed him. It had nothing to do with age or prime, as did most of his losses before this too. Fedor would make dumb mistakes and his fans would instead blame it on his "prime" leaving him instead of fighting poorly instead of like the veteran he was and not making them.

It's honestly the Frankie Edgar problem where everybody blames his latter losses on just his chin leaving him instead of Frankie always moving the same. He was still technical and speedy to the end, but never changed things up so everybody figured him out that it didn't matter if he still moved well right to where they were expecting him. The same thing happened to Fedor. Move well where they think you will = countered and KO'd.

(and that's not even talking about if he just fought a hell of a lot more patiently like he did against Rampage and Johnston he'd have guranteed eliminated at least some losses from not running into dumb mistakes like he did.)

I get what you're saying, but it's a little hard to square that when it seemed that they caught up with his game, right at the tail end of his career. There is validity to what you're saying, but there's also validity in thinking he lost a step or two, and got a bit chinny.

 

[Kung Fu Kowboy]

@BFoe @HHJ

 

[BFoe]

The very obviously problem with narrowing things down to division only is that some fighters have achieved great accomplishments in other divisions too and it's obviously unfair to punish their all time standing by not factoring that and instead arguing they need to be separately ranked at those weights.

I think *some* HWs are in the unfortunate position that they simply *couldn't* have ever achieved accolades in other divisions (i.e Brock who could never make 205) and that shouldn't necessarily weigh for or against them, but also don't think that necesssarily applies to someone like Fedor. He could've dropped down to 205 and tried for a 2nd belt in Pride or Strikeforce, or hell even Bellator. Also, but his strength at HW is also hindered by his own losses and career choice. He's probably the GOAT HW sure, but not being the GOAT MMA is his fault for never winning the UFC belt or even Bellator or Strikeforce belts which would've helped his case even just by getting addition HW accolades.

GOAT of a weight class is an enormously good accomplishment but if that's *solely* your claim to fame you need irrefutable evidence and accomplishments for being the overall MMA GOAT.

I was just pointing out why/how people can discuss GOATs, plural. Of course if we want to determine the single greatest fighter of all time, we have to make decisions as to how to weigh one resume against another; that includes whether to weigh resumes that span weight classes (Hendo, DC, Pereira, etc).

Sure, winning a belt in Strikeforce or Bellator would’ve helped seal the deal. But I don’t think he needed to cut a bunch of weight to try and win a LHW title, he’s got plenty of accolades: RINGS OW Tournament Champ, RINGS Absolute Class Tournament Champ, PRIDE HWGP Champ, PRIDE HW Champ (3 defenses), WAMMA HW Champ (2 defenses)—and he won all of those in a single, continuous undefeated streak. Those 5 HW title defenses in a single streak is a record still today.

Some of the stuff you’re saying is kind of wild. Like

Fedor didn't stay too long though. His power, speed, grappling, and overall physicalness stayed strong his whole career until the end. He retained all the tools to remain relatively successful across his older age and eliminate most of his losses, especially against the likes of people like old man Ryan Bader who should've been good matchups that would've easily let him become a Bellator HW Champ late in his career.

Fedor was like 46 when he retired, that’s crazy old for an MMA fighter. He kept his power, but he wasn’t as fast as he used to be, his grappling declined severely, his chin was all but shot…. It’s just bizarre to act like he didn’t stick around too long but then call Ryan Bader “old man Bader” when he’s like 7 years younger than Fedor.

To even get to the Bellator HWGP Final, Fedor had to fight 3x in 9 months, injured the entire time. You won’t find many fighters in their 40s taking on that kind of schedule.

 

[BowserJr]

He wasn’t a UFC Champion.

Lol, you consider that a win?

Fedor has not been in any realistic GOAT rankings or position since 2015, only lying, dishonest delusional fans like you and @BowserJr are the ones still trying to skew and manipulate his career while diminishing others.

Merab has surpassed Fedor vis strength of competition consistently.


That’s all you got? you’re pretty fucking pathetic.

I guess you missed me so much you had to call me about by name. I'm flattered lol

BTW he's considered the HW GOAT by most fighters but keep telling yourself stories to make yourself feel better

 

[markg171]

I was just pointing out why/how people can discuss GOATs, plural. Of course if we want to determine the single greatest fighter of all time, we have to make decisions as to how to weigh one resume against another; that includes whether to weigh resumes that span weight classes (Hendo, DC, Pereira, etc).

Sure, winning a belt in Strikeforce or Bellator would’ve helped seal the deal. But I don’t think he needed to cut a bunch of weight to try and win a LHW title, he’s got plenty of accolades: RINGS OW Tournament Champ, RINGS Absolute Class Tournament Champ, PRIDE HWGP Champ, PRIDE HW Champ (3 defenses), WAMMA HW Champ (2 defenses)—and he won all of those in a single, continuous undefeated streak. Those 5 HW title defenses in a single streak is a record still today.

Some of the stuff you’re saying is kind of wild. Like

Fedor was like 46 when he retired, that’s crazy old for an MMA fighter. He kept his power, but he wasn’t as fast as he used to be, his grappling declined severely, his chin was all but shot…. It’s just bizarre to act like he didn’t stick around too long but then call Ryan Bader “old man Bader” when he’s like 7 years younger than Fedor.

To even get to the Bellator HWGP Final, Fedor had to fight 3x in 9 months, injured the entire time. You won’t find many fighters in their 40s taking on that kind of schedule.

Fedor winning a Strikforce or Bellator belt wouldn't have hekp him?

Are you high