Lol@ trying to sneak golovkin/lemieux in there.....did u think everyone would be asleep at that point? Lemieux is the best at getting beat by Joachim alcine and marco Rubio
One of the things I was thinking about when I posted this thread was that mma guys will always say that in the UFC the best always fight the best. But I don't think that the best fight the best any more frequently in mma than they do in boxing. If you take the best fighting the best to mean a top ten p4p type guy fighting another top ten p4p type guy, then that **** is like unicorns in either sport. We get about one a year, ten every decade in boxing. I sincerely doubt that you get even that many in mma. So what does that even mean: the best fighting the best? Are we just talking about guys fighting their mandatories? Because that happens hundreds of times a year in boxing. Or do we mean that two highly skilled opponents meet in the ring? The talent pool of boxing is almost eight times as big as the talent pool of mma, so on average our number 8 ranked contender is as good as their champions. You put two guys ranked in the top ten of their division against each other and that should be as an elite a fight as you'll find in the UFC. That happens frequently in boxing, on any given week you can find that. If you look at the fifteen best fighters of this century in boxing vs the fifteen best from mma, the two sports are clearly not on the same level. Boxing 1.Manny Pacquiao 2.Floyd Mayweather 3.Erik Morales 4.Marco Antonio Barrera 5.Juan Manuel Marquez 5.Joe Calzaghe 6.Bernard Hopkins 7.Nonito Donaire 8.Roman Gonzalez 9.Andre Ward 10.Sergio Martinez 11.Guillermo Rigondeaux 12.Sergey Kovalev 13.Gennady Golovkin 14.Saul Alvarez 15. Wladimir Klitschko mma 1.Anderson Silva 2.George St Pierre 3.Jon Jones 4.Fedor Emelianenko 5.Chuck Lidell 6.BJ Penn 7.Jose Aldo 8.Randy Couture 9.Matt Hughes 10.Dan Henderson 11.Antonio Rodriguo Nogueira 12.Wanderlei Silva 13.Demetrius Johnson 14.Mauricio Rua 15.Vitor Belfort Does anybody think that these are comparable level athletes? Does anybody think that Mayweather and Pacquiao aren't superior to Silva and St-Pierre? When you look at their CVs, the guys they fought in a career, is there any doubt that the boxers fought stiffer competition? Just look at who these guys have fought: Manny Pacquiao- Mayweather, Marquez, Morales, Barrera, De La Hoya, Cotto, Bradley, Margarito, Mosley, Hatton, Ledwaba Floyd Mayweather Jr.- Pacquiao, De La Hoya, Alvarez, Castillo, Corrales, Mosley, Cotto, Hernandez, Marquez Erik Morales- Pacquiao, Barrera, Zaragoza, Ayala, Marco Antonio Barrera- Pacquiao, Morales, Marquez, Hamed, Tapia, Ayala Joe Calzaghe- Kessler, Bika, Hopkins, Jones Juan Manuel Marquez- Pacquiao, Barrera, Mayweather, Bradley Bernard Hopkins- Trinidad, De La Hoya, Joppy, Wright, Tarver, Pavlik, Jones, Pascal Gonzalez- Viloria, Estrada, Sosa, Yaegashi Donaire- Darchinyan, Rigondeaux, Narvaez, Marquez, Montiel, Arce, Nishioka, Walters Ward- Froch, Kessler, Bika, Abraham Sergio Martinez- Pavlik, Williams, Chavez Jr. Rigondeaux- Donaire Kovalev- Hopkins, Pascal Golovkin- Lemieux, Murray Alvarez- Mayweather, Mosley, Cotto, Lara, Khan, Trout Klitschko- Povetkin, Byrd, Peter, Ibragimov, Thompson, Haye, Fury Compared to our boxers, who the hell did the mma guys fight? I think that boxers clearly face the better competition.
Another thing that often comes up in these types of discussions is the belief that fighters used to fight the best more frequently and we are living in some kind of decadent age. Here's a list of who the champs at each weight fought in 1965 and in 2015, 50 years later. You be the judge whether things have gotten better or worse. I think you'll find that the level of competition is more or less the same. 1965 Heavyweight Muhammad Ali vs Sonny Liston and Floyd Patterson 2015 Heavyweight Wladimir Klitschko vs Bryant Jennings and Tyson Fury 1965 Light Heavyweight Jose Torres vs Willie Pastrano and Tom McNeeley 2015 Light Heavyweight Sergei Kovalev vs Jean Pascal and Nadjib Mohammedi 1965 Middleweight **** Tiger vs Juan Carlos Rivero and Rubin Carter and Joey Giardello 2015 Middleweight Gennady Golovkin vs Martin Murray and Willie Monroe Jr. and David Lemieux 1965 Welterweight Emile Griffith vs Manuel Gonzalez, Jose Stable, Eddie Pace, Don Fullmer, Gabe Terronez, Harry Scott, Manuel Gonzalez 2015 Welterweight Floyd Mayweather vs Manny Pacquiao and Andre Berto 1965 Junior Welterweight Carlos Hernandez vs Eddie Perkins and Mario Rossito and Percy Hales 2015 Junior Welterweight Lucas Matthysse vs Ruslan Provodnikov and Viktor Postol 1965 Lightweight Carlos Ortiz vs Ismael Laguna and Ismael Laguna 2015 Lightweight Jorge Linares vs Kevin Mitchell and Ivan Cano 1965 Junior Lightweight Flash Elorde vs Rene Barrientos and Teruo Kosaka and Frankie Narvaez and Kang-Il Suh 2015 Junior Lightweight Takashi Uchiyama vs Jomthong Chuwatana and Oliver Flores 1965 Featherweight Vicente Saldivar vs Raul Rojas and Howard Winstone 2015 Featherweight Leo Santa Cruz vs Jesus Ruiz and Jose Cayetano and Abner Mares 1965 Bantamweight Fighting Harada vs Dommy Froilan and Eder Jofre and Katsuo Saito and Alan Rudkin 2015 Bantamweight Shinsuke Yamanaka vs Diego Ricardo Santillan and Anselmo Moreno 1965 Flyweight Salvator Burruni vs Jo Horny, Pone Kingpetch, Francisco Berdonces, Demetrio Carbajal, Jerry Stokes, Michael Lamora, Horacio Accavallo, Katsuyoshi Takayama, Rocky Gatellari 2015 Flyweight Roman Gonzalez vs Valentin Leon and Edgar Sosa and Brian Viloria
Yes and unlike Boxing MMA has proved to be a very random affair on the day,the best can get beaten which is why it's liked whereas boxing the levels between the best seem miles apart,you'd think with all the divisions there'd be enough top fights and there is,only they don't happen much.
