Who is the least skilled male UFC Champion of all time ?

In the modern era, definitely Jamahal. Crazy fluke that he was able to beat 43y/o Glover, his boxing technique looks terrible and boxing is pretty much all he does
 
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Pancake Sprawl said:
i'm the hater? but nobody has refuted what i said with any logical evidence. the only reply i see is "ridiculous! Poatan has stopped takedowns before!" yeah? against WHO? Jiri the kickboxing brawler? people are giving Tim Sylvia the nod on this title and it's wild when he literally BEAT an ADCC grappling champion and easily survived on the ground with him. but people call me hater because i think Poatan stopping a kickboxer's takedown is a laughable level of ability compared to surviving a 2x ADCC champion's ground game.

when all the other UFC champions know how to grapple AND strike, the guy who can ONLY strike is the least skillful. the truth hurts.
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There's not a lot of strong grapplers at LHW right now. It just always looks odd when people are criticizing a guy for clearing out the division that actually exists. He can't magically create a LHW division full of Brock Lesnar's.

Jan couldn't do anything to him on the ground and gassed himself trying. There's Ank who I'm sure he'll fight soon but outside of him, where are all these amazing wrestlers he's ducking?


If they don't exist at LHW then it's kind of a crazy criticism lol.
 
Brock.

Yes he was an NCAA champion, but he wasn't a "skillful wrestler". He was a bull in a china shop massive athletic freak of nature.
 
Nathan LaMontagne said:
Bisping was incredibly skilled , he just lacked the raw athleticism. Can't believe anyone is saying him.

Sylvia wasn't nearly as bad as he's made out to be either. Just slow. Still made it work (to our entertainments detriment later in his title reign)
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The people saying the likes of Bisping and Forrest Griffin were unskilled are just exposing themselves for not having a clue what they are watching.

If anything Bisping made up for his lack of athleticism with his fantastic level of skill. He was a European kickboxing champ, clearly an outstanding striker and outstruck various striking specialists throughout his career like Anderson Silva, Alan Belcher, Cung Le, Wanderlei Silva (despite being robbed in that fight) etc.

And he is a brown belt in bjj as well as a black belt in Japanese jiu-jitsu, despite really only using his grappling defensively in fights. Which is a shame because people who have trained with him have said his grappling is arguably more impressive than his striking. Guys like Rampage Jackson, Anthony Smith, Sean Strickland, Mark Munoz and others all said Bisping tapped them in training. Bisping himself says he used to catch everybody in the gym with the kimura and its a regret of his that he never even attempted one in a fight, let alone finished somebody with one.

The most we saw him use his grappling in fights was as a defensive measure and strikes from the bottom, he beat up Dennis King from the bottom and basically outgrappled the black belt in that fight before finishing him with strikes. He was also arguably getting the better of GSP while keeping him in his guard and beating him up off his back, cutting him open and bruising him.

People saying he is unskilled don't know what they are talking about.

Similar deal with Forrest, not the most athletically gifted but made up for it WITH skill.
 
theincognito said:
Brock.

Yes he was an NCAA champion, but he wasn't a "skillful wrestler". He was a bull in a china shop massive athletic freak of nature.
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In Brock's defense, he improved a lot during his brief career. Look at how composed he was in the 2nd Mir fight compared to the 1st and they were only a year apart.

Brock dropped his first 3 UFC opponents with strikes, he actually submitted someone which Randleman didn't do in his entire career despite facing a lot more gimme opponents, and Brock was able to beat some fellow wrestlers which Randleman consistently failed at doing.

People hate to give Brock any credit as to not look like some closet pro wrestling fan but Brock > Randleman. He improved more in his 3 years in the UFC (which were marred with multiple severe illnesses) than Randleman did over 15 years.

Again, no disrespect to The Monster. He was well liked and is missed but objectively, he is probably the least skilled champion to me.
 
If you pick Menne you could very well pick Pat Miletich as well.
Menne actually did much better vs common opponents in Pele Landi and Carlos Newton.

But Miletich went to be a well-known coach and commentator while Menne is none of that plus had a non-impressive figure
 
FreddieRoachsVoice said:
In Brock's defense, he improved a lot during his brief career. Look at how composed he was in the 2nd Mir fight compared to the 1st and they were only a year apart.

Brock dropped his first 3 UFC opponents with strikes, he actually submitted someone which Randleman didn't do in his entire career despite facing a lot more gimme opponents, and Brock was able to beat some fellow wrestlers which Randleman consistently failed at doing.

People hate to give Brock any credit as to not look like some closet pro wrestling fan but Brock > Randleman. He improved more in his 3 years in the UFC (which were marred with multiple severe illnesses) than Randleman did over 15 years.

Again, no disrespect to The Monster. He was well liked and is missed but objectively, he is probably the least skilled champion to me.
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Randleman is a good answer and I had forgotten he was champ.

To Randleman's credit he was NCAA champ at 167 and 177 lb so he was probably at least above average in pure wrestling skill to be able to compete at those weights, though it was probably his athleticism that put him over the top as well.

In MMA he was roided to the point of doing more harm than good in addition to being with a trash camp that put little to no effort into submissions/submission defense and striking. He might be the right answer in any case.
 
Spiderbite said:
The Randy fight destroyed any and all momentum Sylvia built up.

Dude was a gangly horror show, but he was a monster for a brief time.
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He beat Cabbage , McKee, Arlovski, Silva and Jeff Monson …..all the top heavyweights were in pride or Tim Silvia wouldn’t be a thing imo
 
Skarsgard said:
Blackbelt in BJJ, endless cardio, and good striking. He never sat down on his punches or utilized his grappling enough to get the finish, but the dude was skilled.
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Griffin was highly skilled…..He was also Slow as fuck with zero athletic ability lol …..can’t teach heart and determination though….Those were his best attributes
 
HHJ said:
He wasnt UFC champion when he looked like that. You couldnt say that Tim was an unskilled striker. He was certainly too big to really be able to do much on the ground, but on the feet, he could fight, if he got his jab going.

This is nonsense. He's been taken down and not only survived, but gotten back, completley extricating himself from harm.
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Against Mir and Arlovski he looked clueless on the ground imo…..bit rocked against Arlovski to be fair
 
filthybliss said:
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This.

I couldn't stand watching this guy fight.
 
theincognito said:
Randleman is a good answer and I had forgotten he was champ.

To Randleman's credit he was NCAA champ at 167 and 177 lb so he was probably at least above average in pure wrestling skill to be able to compete at those weights, though it was probably his athleticism that put him over the top as well.

In MMA he was roided to the point of doing more harm than good in addition to being with a trash camp that put little to no effort into submissions/submission defense and striking. He might be the right answer in any case.
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Yeah Randleman's offensive takedowns were extremely good but unfortunately, he couldn't do much with them and would become a sitting duck with no way to finish the fight. It's shocking that his ground and pound wasn't more effective and that he didn't even learn basic submissions over time but his resume tells a story that differs greatly than most people's memories of him.

It feels like he had the potential to be great but he was either not interested in developing or just really, really needed to leave Hammer House. I agree that the roids were detrimental to him; both health and performance wise. Guy was a major underachiever considering his athletic pedigree
 
r-harper-1 said:
Against Mir and Arlovski he looked clueless on the ground imo…..bit rocked against Arlovski to be fair
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Timmah got his blue belt in BJJ in 2010 ( his last fight in the UFC was in 2008)

"Jiu-Jitsu black belts Pedro Silveira and Rodrigo Uzeda gave lessons at five gyms across the United Stated. On the last belt exam, almost 200 athletes graduated, including the former UFC heavyweight champion Tim Sylvia, who got the Jiu-Jitsu blue belt from the hands of the Brazilians."

 
r-harper-1 said:
He beat Cabbage , McKee, Arlovski, Silva and Jeff Monson …..all the top heavyweights were in pride or Tim Silvia wouldn’t be a thing imo
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Monson was on a 4 year/16 fight undefeated streak. He's beaten Sergei, Ricco Rodriguez, Fujita, and nearly beat Barnett... all major Pride names.

Assuerio Silva was 2-1-1 in Pride with a split decision loss to Fedor's brother aka one of Cro Cop's big wins.

Arlovski was a multi-time defending UFC HW champion who beat Bigfoot and Werdum (who both beat Fedor). He also has countless other top 10 wins and was a HW mainstay for nearly 20 years.

Yeah Silvia lost to Mir... but so did Nog... twice.

Gan McKee stopped Prime Pedro Rizzo who was apparently still worthy enough to be fished out to be Fedor's opponent in his 1st retirement fight <lmao>. While I don't at all consider Gan McKee a good win, I do find it funny that Fedor nuthuggers will list off misleading stats like "The # of UFC HW Champions he beat" while conveniently leaving out any context like how 5 of them were completely passed their primes when he got around to fighting them ;)

I fully acknowledge that Pride had the better HW roster at the time but I am also aware that they heavily protected/inflated the abilities of the majority of their stars by spoonfeeding them lots of cans between contenders. Just because they had a great roster sure as hell doesn't mean the best consistently fought the best. In what other promotion ever is the top fighter in the world going to fight Zulu?

And as for the Pride fighters' success in the UFC, well... it didn't work out for most of them did it? Fedor gets brutalized by a guy who went 3-17-1 after the fight. Cro Cop gets unstruck by Gonzaga and Kongo. Nog gets KO'd and subbed by Mir. Or are you one of the die hards who believes they were "suddenly" out of their primes despite having years of success afterwards? lol

Sylvia was not better than these guys... but it's silly to act like they were light years beyond him either. History has proven that Pride was a heavily corrupt organization and that none of the fighters were nearly as good as they were presented to be. It's truly amazing how the Fedor hype survives to this day despite the constant hoops his fanboys have to jump through to explain away the glaring holes in his sketchy career.
 
BJJ4Tone said:
Can't believe it took so long for someone to say the correct answer.

Not counting tournament winners, it's definitely Dave Menne.
I would have beaten that dude.
<{UberTS}>
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Be honest, you didnt watch him fight.
Menne beat Pele Landi or Newton in their primes, among many other legit fighters
 
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