Your Top 3 ATG by Weight Class.

Dos Santos has a better resume than Cain at this point.

 

Heavyweight:
1) Fedor Emelianenko
2) Anotonio Rodrigo Nogueira
3) Randy Couture (wouldnt argue with Cro-cop for this spot tho)

Light-Heavyweight:
1) Wanderlei Silva (5 yr Pride run beats Chuck`s UFC run IMO)
2) Chuck Liddell
3) Shogun Rua (He will likely finish as the greatest when career is over IMO)

Middleweight:
1) Kazushi Sakuraba (Just how good was this guy in his prime, people might forget because of how he is today but not me, he was amazing)
2) Anderson Silva
3) Frank Shamrock

Welterweight:
1) Matt Hughes
2) Georges St.Pierre (Will likely overtake Hughes if not already)
3) Pat Militech

Lightweight:
1) BJ Penn
2) Takanori Gomi
3) Jens Pulver

 

Thats because there was no 185 as such, Pride only had MW & HW divisions & Sakuraba mostly fought guys that weighed 205 & in his prime he finished them all decisively except fot Wanderlei, he even fought HWs & was never dominated.... Id say that is more of an accomplishment than Ive ever seen any other 185lber do... Saku was the best ever MW.

 

Point ?
Thats not a point... thats hands down the biggest lot of **** Ive read today.

Nogueira at his best would be the no1 guy in the UFC TODAY !!!!
Id suggest you watch his Pride fights before hitting out with mental **** like that again.

 

How the Nog of 5-10 years ago would have faired vs Cain today is highly debateble, what we can say for certain is that many fighters have achieved more in the way of results than Cain.

thewinfella is ranking Cain at #3 based on his opinion of his abilties compaired to the previous generation of HW's, not on his actual achievements. By his own standards thats not an unreasonable position to take even if its a highly debateble one but those standards are not the same as those everyone else is using or those which would be used by most people for similar debates in boxing.

 

Actually i have to agree in that Dos Santos's resume is slightly better than Velasquez's , but Dos Santos has not dominated his opponents the way Cain has , his opponents on average have been slightly better but the margin is very slight , Dos Santos has looked in a league of his own in terms of stand up ability , but Velasquez has shown superior speed , strength , wrestling and cardio , for me this is the more dominant skill set for MMA , example , when Roy Nelson would not fall over Dos Santos had no plan B , he didnt pick him apart with kickboxing or didnt look to take the fight to the ground , it was a 1 dimensional attack , for me Velasquez is a multi dimensional fighter .

Lesnar ........................... im not defending the guy im just stating that he is a talented wrestler , i dont see him as a joke TBH either , ok yes his stand up is shocking , and just about every aspect of his game apart from his wrestling and his strength are shocking , but he's effective , he beat the **** out of Mir and KO'd Couture , its not like the guy fought bums , you have to give him some sort of credit , its a bitter pill to swallow but you have to credit the guy for at least that , on the wrestling front , you dont ever hardly see clean wrestling technique in any MMA fight , its normally transitioned from striking or a counter shot , or a shot from the clinch where your work has to be better technically than the conventional shot , therefore Lesnar rarely needs to be technically perfect on every shot to secure a TD ............

Were gonna agree to dis agree on Cain's AT status , were gonna have too or we will drag this out for weeks but you have valid points and in the end you backed them up with some knowledge :good i just dont agree with you ............. until next time bro

The Penn example ......................

When Penn was 3 & 0 with blistering performances and quick KO's over some of the more renowned LW's , he was considered by many to be the best LW in the world , even in the presence of Jens Pulver & Takanori Gomi and he was 3 & 0 !!!!!

I was not referring to Penn's AT status at that moment , i was referring to his THEN current world ranking , which after just 3 fights was in some people's eyes the very best fighter in the world , and i was trying to point out that thats what happens in a young sport such as MMA , and we are still at that srage now , Edgar has 12 fights , Jose Aldo was 12 & 0 when he became champion (i think) , Lesnar 4 & 0 , Machida 11 & 0 , the sport is constantly evolving and we still dont know the benchmark of the standard of a true elite fighter

 

Ive seen all of Nogueira's defining fights , Pride and UFC and im of the opinion that Velasquez has a better skill set than Nogueira ever had , thats my opinion ...........

In the Pride organisation Velasquez would not be seen as the dominating force he is seen as today as the rules and the ring would not allow Velasquez's skill set to flourish the way the Octagon and UFC rules do , its a less fluent fight with stop's and start's which would of suited anybody against Velasquez as it would hamper his superior wrestling ability .

Nogueira was winning his superfights against lesser opponents than Cain is blowing holes in today , and im not referring to Fedor im reffering to the many stocking fillers Pride had , to make there so called superstars look better , Nogueira was picked apart on his feet by Tim Sylvia , i dont care if your supposed to be shot , shot or not if your being picked apart on the feet on the feet by Sylvia and your supposed to be a " boxer " , that cannot say that much for your technical ability !!!!

Something Nogueira was not noted for i know , but evalutate his style , he's a boxer with great JJ or in reverse a JJ practitioner who can box a little .

 

Not neccesarily , on the whole yes , but the point im making is that yester years fighters such as Couture , Rizzo , Mir , Arlovski , Barnett , Cro Cop and co all lost to there peers when they were " in there prime " .............

Velasquez has battered his way to the top of the UFC division in a more competetive division and in much more dominant fashion without ever looking like losing a round let alone a fight .

That is the point im trying to make , and im glad someone see's where im coming from

 

Many many of his pears has Cain faced though? meaning guys with a decent claim of being truely elite HW's, really only Nog and Lesnar and both of them have serious question marks agenst them. If JDS shows enough grappling ability to beat Lesnar then he'll be Cains first truely massive fight.

As has been said I wouldnt say Cain looked that dominant vs Kongo, he got worked standing and needed to exploit Cheiks obvious weakness on the ground to win.

 

Nog was a BJJ guy who had some decent boxing. Sylvias strength was stand up and he floored Nog a few times, the guy still pulled out the win.

 

He man handled a 240 lb monster and played with him !!!!!! Kongo was completley completley outclassed in grappling terms , on the feet he stunned him once , other than that he was eating shots off the ground virtually the whole fight .

And like i pointed out to other people who beleived Kongo presented Velasquez with great problems , Velasquez landed a record breaking amount of strikes recorded in a UFC HW fight against Kongo which still stands today ..................

Velasquez by the middle of the 2nd could of finished that fight off multiple times with a sumbmission just like the Rothwell fight , but he doesnt look for submissions , he'd rather control an opponent with his top game and punish them from that position with strikes .

When you say Elite HW's , there are only 2 Elite HW's on record , Fedor and Nogueira , thats it !!!!!!!

 

Thats what i said ..............

 

That's fair enough, I was just taking this ****. He made his point, which I happend to disagree with, and I made my points as too why.
By then he starts making random points like I dont use spaces between my paragraphs to justify his somehow, I just tuned out. Shouldnt have got involved in something so silly, but it is what it is

 

Kongo is a poor grappler though as we've seen many times, the main test he presented was to Cain's standup ability and it didnt look all that great with him getting rocked 3 times.

Cain certainly has power standing and great recovery but his defence still has to be pretty questionable, even Brock was landing a fair bit on him(even if they were weak arm punches).

 

This is exactly the point I was trying to make. I'm not disupiting Cain skills, the only thing I was saying is that it's a little too soon to put him at the #3 spot IMO.

Back in the days Penn was considered to be #1, but not in a ATG ranking, it was too soon for him to put him there even though he deserved it in the end.

As for Lesnar I give him his wrestling credential, he is an incredible wrestler, but that's just a 1 pony trick. And even if his wrestling credential are good, IMO is technique is far from good when he is fighting, it's like if he was loosing is temper and just worked with some kind of survival instinct, wich is a bad thing since you need to keep analyzing the fight and think about what you are doing.

Yeah, agree to disagree I guess !