1. Fedor Emelianenko 2. Stipe Miocic 3. Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira 4. Fabricio Werdum 5. Junior Dos Santos 6. Mirko Cro Cop 7. Josh Barnett 8. Francis Ngannou 9. Daniel Cormier 10. Cain Velasquez 11. Alistair Overeem 12. Randy Couture 13. Sergei Kharitonov 14. Andrei Arlovski 15. Frank Mir Honourable mentions: Pedro Rizzo, Tim Sylvia and Igor Vovchanchyn.
DC is too low & Stipe is too high. No Coleman? He'd be there instead of Sergei. Coleman was a beast and successful in terms of belts across different organisations. I like the list though. You know your history.
This is as perfect of a list as you're going to get, I think. Cool to see some appreciation for Vovchanchyn - you don't really see that level of unbridled ferocity in the sport anymore. Would love to see your p4p picks.
Thanks man, Yeah I should of probably put Coleman on honourable mentions at least. I think the problem is with Coleman is in his prime his stamina was his downfall and he went on that three fight loss streak (Not including the Takada fight) Maurice Smith's victory over Coleman is still amazing to this day and Coleman arguably did beat Pedro Rizzo if I remember correctly. Also Coleman's performances against Bonnar and Shogun at 205 in his later deserve a lot of respect as he really showed his heart in his advance age back then. Sergei Kharitonov is really underrated imo, some of the best boxing ever in MMA and still to this day active and winning fights, he could still beat a couple of the lower ranked heavyweights in UFC now I believe. His brutal knockouts over Arlovski, Schilt, Rizzo and Sokoudjou are some great highlight reel type quality.
I agree. Wrestlers have tremendous conditioning, but their cardio sucks in the end. Agreed with Sergei. He's a very nasty guy in yhe cage.
Speak of the devil, Sergei racked up another win last night against Tyrone Spong in Khabib's new promotion (@ the 9 minute mark). Maybe next time around they can set up a fight against him and the ghost of Fedor. This content is protected
The guy is just a natural fighter, love that he's still winning fights in his 40's. I'd still be down for seeing Fedor fight Kharitonov, Barnett or Dos Santos. Maybe Fedor could fight for Khabib?
Kharitonov is such a ****ing tank. I remember against Overeem, he just took everything Alistair could throw and then broke him down. Good stuff.
Vovchanchyn is probably my favourite dude out of all of them. Pity people nowadays never saw him in his prime. What a beast.
I think Fedor, Cain and DC at the top of their game were probably the 3 best in terms of pure head to head ability. But its not really reflected on the resume of the latter two because Cain was injured all the time and DC didnt stick around at HW long enough.
I believe guys like Junior Dos Santos and Mirko Cro Cop would of been all wrong for DC, both had fantastic takedown defence and better stand up, DC doesn't defend kicks well either which is not good against a prime Cro Cop.
