Choose you're criteria be it resume, achievement or skill level and then give your top five list. Would the pioneers like Gracie or Sakuraba be skilled enough today? Is that something you even care about when ranking? What's your top five and why? Bonus points if you can do a divisional list as well. Ok here's my top 5 Fedor A. Silva GSP Henderson Lidell I haven't included Jones, McGregor, Johnson, Cruz, Velasquez or Aldo because I still think they've got more to offer the sport. BW and FLW is too new to consider any of those just yet. Honourable mentions for Noguiera, Cro Cop, Jackson, Rua, Ortiz, Wanderlei, Franklin, Hughes, Penn, Pulver. Still not sure how to rate Gracie, Shamrock x2, Couture and Sakuraba. Unsure if I've missed off any other ATG locks. Lidell might be high but h2h he's an absolute beast.
There was a thread I did about 2 years ago on this subject: https://www.boxingforum24.com/threads/what-is-your-top-5-10-atg-list-of-mma.541018/ I still maintain: 1.GSP 2.Jones 3. Fedor 4. Aldo 5.Silva
The hard part about an ATG in MMA is that it is so young and the rule set has changed so much and how the game was played has changed so much in the short time it has been around (compared to boxing). For example, Royce Gracie was dominant in the early days when no one knew what the contest was about. Marco Ruas was one of the first to bring the MMA skillset that we see today into the ring (Muay Thai, BJJ). Then you have the advent of the wrestlers come into the mix and dominate in MMA with their "ground and pound". You had Matt Hughes as a dominant champion during this time period, who also gave GSP one of his losses. Then you have the return of the striker, guys like Chuck Liddell who dominated with his striking and grappling defense to get it back to standing. There are too many phases of the game, and the early guys are going to get passed over to the newer guys (as the list reflects). You don't have someone like Dan Severn on the list who was near the end of his career span when MMA took off, but who fought a one night tournament of some of the UFC's better fighters and fought 3 fights in one night to win the UFC "Ultimate Ultimate". Not to mention, Pride vs. UFC with completely different rule sets that did not translate well for fighters to move from one camp to the other. Wanderlei Silva was very dominate in Pride and still fairly successful in the UFC, but couldn't do many of the things that made him so dominant in Pride.
It is interesting. But I mean if you took Jone Jones and placed him in the Gracie era, would you still expect Royce to be so dominant?
Extremely hard to make an MMA ATG list. It's evolved a lot and not everybody has seen the old school guys. I can put together a list of the best guys to watch, though 1) Vovchanchyn 2) Fedor 3) Wanderlei 4) Shogun 5) Sakuraba 6) Rampage .... yeah, I never watched enough UFC
Liddell shouldn't be on there, his title reign was fighting game guys who "fit" his style whilst tge UFCWAS marketing a brand through him.
Also, Rampage tooled him in his prime and Shogun finished off the remains later. That said, he was an entertaining guy to watch Almost as much fun as watching Keith Hackney flatten Joe Son's balls
I hate how the UFC tried to feed a past prime Wand to Liddell after 9/10 months out and coming off two brutal knockouts. It was a great fight but the result wasn't one that the UFC was expecting, I think they thought Wand wouldn't make it past the first.
I was just thinking of that. Actually Wanderlei did pretty well, all things considered, and if you watch the very end, he was coming back into the fight. If the fight had been longer Liddell may well have gotten splattered. It kind of sucked to see the decline of the Axe Murderer. I saw some of his really early footage from Brazil. He was much less muscular but Mother o' God he was a little wolverine. He ran through some tough-looking American guy by the name of Eugene 'the Wolf' Jackson like the guy owed him money.
Sorry but Fedor no longer deserves to be #1. Roy Jones Jr could have been the best ever if he stopped at the right time but he didn't. Just because every newb puppets that Fedor is #1 on message boards, probably not having watched even half his fights doesn't make it true. It is GSP #1 pretty easy and I hate GSP.
Nonsense. Liddell fought all comers and came up the hard way. Tito Ortiz who was the the poster boy back then was ducking him for years.
Both guys were past their primes and coming off loses. They weren't bringing Wand in just to lose, it was just the first time the fight could reasonably be made. White put Liddell into the pride gp with the intention of him making the finals vs Wand and then a couple years later pride and ufc were going to co-promote a fight card with them fighting but it fell through. It was a fight years in the making.
Pretty sure Dana just did that as a gambled in hopes that his golden boy would make Pride look bad.. But it backfired. Wish he had done the same with Mir or Couture. There are still hordes of delusional UFC fanboys who think Pride didn't have the best heavyweights back then or that Fedor wasn't the best.
