Best MMA HW of all-time behind Fedor and Rodrigo Nogueira. At one time was the most feared man in MMA.
Oh, most definitely. PRIDE's HW division was light years ahead of the UFC's. That doesn't, however, make me feel that those fighters were wholly superior to today's and it doesn't make me reconsider Filipovic's ATG status because in a few years a lot of the guys considered for that today will have become largely irrelevent in the scheme of things. I'm sure that fans in the early 1900s thought that there could never be a fighter to match Sullivan but you'll rarely hear of anyone imagining a fantasy match-up between he and Ali or Joe Louis because the game evolved dramatically from the 1880s to the 1960s. I'm not saying that Fedor won't rank among ATGs because he will. He was the first modern HW who could punch, fight in the clinch, and had superlative position and submission skills and I can't imagine any fighter that I would ever make a heavy favorite over a prime Fedor. With that being said, he was never infallible, he was never the indestructable cyborg his fanboys made him out to be and regardless of what any of you "classic MMA" fans think, Cain, Cigano, and Overeem would have given him trouble at any point of his career. Just like Mirko, part of the mystique was the fact that he consistently faced numerous tomato cans in-between bouts with legitimate HWs which significantly padded his record. The difference between Fedor and Mirko as ATGs is simple. Fedor held THE major title in HW fighting for years and while he was busting cans he also beat up nearly all of his contemporaries, as well. Mirko lost big fights he shouldn't have, never held a major title, and completely **** the bed when he came to the States. Fedor also **** the bed in the States but he had a couple good performances at the beginning and a legacy that was already well secure and was only made moreso when he destroyed his UFC counterparts in Sylvia and Arlovski.
These guys aren't superior today but legacy isn't based on what you think, its based on what they actually achieved in terms of wins, rivalries, titles etc In the same way many find it hard to believe Rocky Marciano would beat Wladimir Klitcshko but that doesn't mean Wlad is greater than him. With the likes of Cain and JDS it might be hard for Fedor and co to hold onto their ATG places but we are speaking about hear and now. CC may not have held a major title because he is still in an era where there are only ever 1, maybe 2 titles worth holding. Much like the days of Jack Johnson and co. Sam Langford may not have been the heavyweight champ but in those days people would have ranked him as one of the best because its about who he beat. Fedor, Nog, CC and Barnett are the best 4 rivals in the history of heavyweight MMA. They beat all the other tomatoe cans around and duked it out with each other to dictate their all time ranking. By beating everyone outside of each bar the odd guy (they are human after all) saw to it that they became a league of their own. In an era where most mixed martial artists had full legacie after 15 fights these guys approached MMA like boxing, they stayed fighting even if they had to fight a tomatoe can in between. HOWEVER that didn't stop Fedor from fighting Nog 3 times, CC once and lined up to face Barnett. Similarly CC faced Barnett 3 times, Nog once and Fedor once. Nog and Barnett did the same. That is why they have about 40 fights each, which is still hard to achieve in MMA.
Your main problem here is that you are trying to equate boxing with MMA, when (a) they're completely different, and (b) there's absolutely no point in doing so. "This will be looked at like the bareknuckle era, that will be looked at like..." No they won't. Because it's a different sport entirely, it started out differently, it's trajectory has been completely different, it's evolution has been completely different, and it's current direction is completely different. You'd be much better served to desist from planning out some parallel in your mind that you think sounds good, but actually has no connection whatsoever to the reality. As of right now, Crocop is the 3rd greatest heavyweight there has been. He hold multiple wins over the 4th best heavyweight there has been, and the quality of his striking and his performances in a notoriously tough circuit will always be remembered in the history of this sport; not a different sport that you think mirrors it, but this sport. :good
No, the similiarities between the trajectories of the two sports is striking to say the least. Bareknuckle= Vale Tudo & NHB Marquess of Queensberry= Establishment of Unified Rules Golden Age= Modern era MMA now that rules have been firmly established, proper techniques and styles have been formed, high quality athletes are competing. All sports have pretty much the same trajectory. The sport is invented, it's cleaned up and refined, then it becomes popular enough that superior athletes decide to give it a go.
Yes, but you overlook this crucial point: Your post = Nonsense. :good The sports have not had a similar trajectory at all, therefore any attempt at superimposing a similarity is useless/pointless. As ever, things should be examined and evaluated on their own merits, which is obviously much more accurate and meaningful than drawing vague, inaccurate and worthless parallels. Boxing was already being contested for around 60 years under the Queensbury rules before the Walker Law even came into being, which pretty much torpedoes your whole theory, hence the futility of it. :deal
We're not saying that the timeline has to be exactly the same, the stages have to line up and these stages are clear. Unrefined and underground fighting, established rules and technical refinements to the science of it, and finally a Golden Age when the athletes and fight science caught up to the excitement potential of the sport. It's not hard to digest, kiddo. If you honestly can't see the major jump in depth and talent from 1999-2007 then you don't understand fighting and are living in the past. It's OK, you can probably find old PRIDE DVDs for cheap these days so that you can continue believing that these larger-than-life gods of JMMA are forever the greatest. The rest of us will continue to enjoy watching the sport grow and worry about ranking ATGs a bit later when we have had something longer than twenty years to establish the guidelines for such ranking.
Tbf some of what you say is true but you are a generation behind on mma fighters, Igor Vovchanchyn was maybe the first guy to do all the things you are saying but years before, fedor/nog etc are the generation of fighters after that with more refined skills. The generation we have now are pure athletes with the refined skills.
Riiiiiight, so because MMA has improved over 20 years and in your opinion exponentially over the last decade, that makes it a mirror image of a sport which has been around for 150 years and has (shockingly) also improved during its lifespan. Yes, it's a superb analogy, very insightful. Why bother evaluating things on their own merits when you can superimpose them onto each other? One sport is unrecognizable from what it was 20 years ago, the other hasn't changed radically in 90 years, but who cares right? They have both improved, so they are kind of almost but not really the same. A very worthwhile endeavour indeed. lol::nut
I've come to respect and enjoy the opinions of most on this board but you're a thick, pompous **** who can't follow the most simple of comparisons. Vale Tudo was the first modern form of MMA and it existed from the '20s to the '90s largely unchanged, that's equivalent to bareknuckle boxing's stretch in England from the late 17th century to the introduction of the London Prize Ring Rules. A bit longer than Vale Tudo's seventy-five years or so but an equivalent none the less. Then, the UFC comes along and Vale Tudo gets cleaned up a bit within the first few years after its introduction, similar to how boxing became more organized and more of a legitimate sporting event with a few universal rules. MMA followed that by introducing the Unified Rules which were akin to the introduction of Marquess of Queensberry Rules from which we have the origins of modern boxing. The boxers that were competing in the late nineteenth century when boxing began to achieve some semblance of legitimacy bear some similiarities to the styles we see employed today but they still hadn't put together the pieces of the sweet science. Again, similarly, MMA fighters competing under the newly created Unified Rules were beginning to figure out what worked and what didn't but they were clearly much more raw and unrefined than the athletes competing now. By the '30s and '40s boxers were nearly identical to the athletes we have competing these days and the game hasn't evolved much since then. We've reached that point with MMA. Fighters have a set of styles and disciplines that are known to work and they work within those bounds. This isn't hard to understand or digest and your refusal or inability to follow my argument, which is that boxing and MMA both experienced a similar timeline of growth and development in their respective times, makes me question what you bring to the table as a poster here other than your blatant cocksucking of anything and everything late '90s Japan.hi:
I'm not a generation behind. MMA was not yet established enough nor was there as clear a competative architecture nor a big enough of a talent tool. Fedor and co however were well rounded fighters who understood the art of striking and grappling. Perhaps not like today but they were the first to set striking legacies. I love Igor, Kerr, Coleman and co like the rest of the MMA fans and they achieved some great things but not in line with these 4. But then everything is debatable.
In other words, I regularly own and embarrass you, and you ****ing hate it. :smoke Except, of course, that they didn't, at all. Hence why you are as wrong now as you were two pages ago, despite your earnest attempts to pull this back. Their timelines weren't remotely similar at all. atsch
How the **** are you not getting this? I can't believe anyone is THIS pigheaded, stubborn, and stupid to to read all of the above where I clearly illustrated the similar path to modernity that both sports took and your best is "I own you and you're wrong". Seriously, you haven't a clue about boxing or MMA and you live so far in the past with your head stuffed so hard into your ass that you can't comprehend a well-detailed argument that left no room for you to squirm and bull**** out of. You either don't understand what we're discussing or you're so goddamned daft that clear and concise English makes no sense to you when you've formed your own uneducated and worthless opinion.
Why are you getting so angry that your **** analogy has been exposed as such? This is eerily similar to the time it was proven that you didn't know what the word "fluke" meant, yet you argued til you were blue in the face about it like a petulant 8 year old, and pretty much embarrassed yourself. Other than the ****ing obvious "they started, they got better" (wow, incredible insight there, of great use), boxing and MMA have NOT evolved in a similar fashion at all. Anyone who understands both sports knows this. You evidently don't. MMA started off as a contest between people from different disciplines who thrust those disciplines against each other. In under 20 years, it has become completely and utterly transformed, to the point where it is the same sport in name only, pretty much. However, the quality has not risen exponentially, the sport has merely changed into a different art form. Compare this to boxing, which has around 60 years of stability, then the Walker Law, and has experienced a further 90 years of relative stability (google The Walker Law, because it's patently obvious you don't know what it is, Professor Chinchecker :rofl). Since the immediate post-Walker Law times, the sport has improved on the physical side, but there have been no great developments in skill or technique, which you would understand if you had watched a lot of footage of guys like Willie Pep and Ray Robinson, which you evidently haven't, preferring to "chincheck" James Kirkland in your spare time, you ****ing troll imbecile. There is no similarity ****head. Your analogy was ****. Because both sports involve "punching", you try to equate them, when there is no basis for this. They began differently, evolved differently, and will continue to do so, for various reasons. You are out of your depth here (again), stick to chinchecking would be my advice. :smoke