Rank them according their absolute best

Gregoire · Post #1 » by **Gregoire** » Thu Jan 9, 2014 2:50 pm

Rank these heavyweights according they peaks (absolute best form):

Fedor
Velasquez
Lesnar
Overeem
Barnett
Minotauro
CroCop
Dos Santos
Couture
Mir

skflives · Post #2 » by **skflives** » Thu Jan 9, 2014 3:56 pm

I guess you want these guys ranked from when they were at their best. Here would be my ranking along with my reasoning for ranking them in their position.

Cain Velasquez: (inhuman cardio, improving striking, great wrestling)
Fedor (deceptively fast, powerful, smart, unshakeable and well rounded)
Minotauro (great submissions and underrated boxing)
Mirko Cro Cop (lethal kicks and terrific takedown defense)
Junior Dos Santos (great boxing but kind of plodding, despite pedigree wasn't able to work a submission in fights he was taken down repeatedly, that being said it was against Cain so probably not his fault)
Brock Lesnar (ironically was at his best before he tried to be a real Mixed Martial Artist, his powerful takedowns were hard to stop and you just didn't want the mofo on top of you)
Josh Barnett-(Great wrestling, great submissions, good striker if someone basic)
Randy Couture (smart fighter and good wrestler but undersized, doesn't have fantastic power)
Frank Mir-(Powerful, great submissions, underrated power but chinny)
Alistar Overeem- (powerful striker, strong, subpar grappling compared to others on this list, fights too cocky for someone with his weak chin, underwhelming resume as a heavyweight compared to others on this list)

Gregoire · Post #3 » by **Gregoire** » Thu Jan 9, 2014 5:00 pm

Great answer!

I rank them for now:

Cain
Fedor
JDS
Overeem
Minotauro
Mirco
Barnett
Lesnar
Mir
Couture

cgf · Post #4 » by **cgf** » Thu Jan 9, 2014 7:05 pm

Fedor
Big Nog
Cain - although he'd have put in a hell of a bout against either of the top two in their primes
JDS/Cro Cop - if I ever get a time machine I'm using it to make this bout happen

Barnett
Randy
Mir
Lesnar
Reem - why the reem still hasn't realized that in MMA rounds are longer than 3 minutes and you don't get those huge kickboxing gloves to defend yourself I'll never understand. If he ever figured those two things out he could've jumped above Warmaster and been close to JDS/CroCop

EDIT: Off topic but I wonder if JDS could work his way down to be able to cut to 205. He can't walk around more than 10-15 pounds heavier than bones and gus. Cause if he stays at HW sooner or later the UFC will be stuck scheduling JDS/Cain 4 and unless he decides not to fight like an idiot that won't go any better than JDS/Cain II & III.

cowboyronnie · Post #5 » by **cowboyronnie** » Thu Jan 9, 2014 7:29 pm

I agree with a lot of sklives' picks, including Cain at #1.

Turns out, there weren't a lot of great head-to-head matches for a lot of these fighters. None of them exhaustively beat all comers...not too many have had to run the gauntlet like a GSP or Silva.

Mirko's record includes a lot of wins against unimpressive guys and a lot of prime years spent transitioning to MMA. Barnett, Fedor and Randy missed a lot of great match-ups too.

Cain's the only one where you can't really imagine too many other competitors testing him. Cormier aside.

Cammo101 · Post #6 » by **Cammo101** » Fri Jan 10, 2014 12:11 am

1. Velasquez
2. Fedor
3. Dos Santos
4. Lesnar
5. Minotauro
6. Mir
7. Barnett
8. CroCop
9. Couture
10. Overeem

Post #7 » by **CPT** » Sat Jan 11, 2014 2:33 am

Since these guys are all in the same weight class, I'm going by who I think would win, because that makes the most sense to me. In an effort to do anything other than write a paper on article use by Korean learners of English, I went through the list round robin style to see what the records would come out to. Some of the logic isnt exactly airtight, and there's some rock-paper-scissors action going on in some cases, but this was a better way to get my head around it.

1. Velasquez 9-0
2. Fedor 8-1
3. CroCop 6-3 (I'm not entirely sure how that happened, but I'm okay with it)
4. JDS 5-4
5. Big Nog 5-4
6. Barnett 3-6
7. Lesnar 3-6
8. Overeem 3-6
9. Couture 1-8
10. Mir 0-9

And I think I'd favour DC over Velasquez, but I'm not sure if I'm comfortable with what that says.

Cammo101 · Post #8 » by **Cammo101** » Sun Jan 12, 2014 2:45 am

I think people in general here are not giving Mir enough credit. His prime was before his motorcycle accident, and back then he was a stone cold killer.

Post #9 » by **CPT** » Sun Jan 12, 2014 3:48 am

I don't really care what he can do to Wes Sims. Prime vs. Prime, Mir loses to every fighter on this list, IMO.

Feel free to break down why he would beat Barnett, CC, Randy, Overeem if you want, though.

Gregoire · Post #10 » by **Gregoire** » Sun Jan 12, 2014 10:31 am

Where Cormier would be on your lists?

Cammo101 · Post #11 » by **Cammo101** » Mon Jan 13, 2014 3:38 am

CPT wrote:I don't really care what he can do to Wes Sims. Prime vs. Prime, Mir loses to every fighter on this list, IMO.

Feel free to break down why he would beat Barnett, CC, Randy, Overeem if you want, though.

How many times does a guy have to embarrass Big Nog before he leaps ahead of him on a list? Prime Mir was an absolute killer, much better than Overeem for sure. I'd be hard pressed to even known when Overeem's prime is, because he pretty much loses to every quality fighter he faces.

Mir is just one of those guys who never gets any respect. The guy knocked out Cro Cop and subbed Big Nog, yet we are supposed to pretend he magically has no chance against them. Mir has never been as good as he was when he was ripping Sylvia's arm off, and despite being an MMA Hall of Famer, he will always be a big of a what if guy. That said though, he is still a much better, more accomplished fighter than most people seem to want to give him credit for. Would be he beat everyone on this list? No. Would he go 0-10 against them? Not even close.

cgf · Post #12 » by **cgf** » Mon Jan 13, 2014 8:54 am

I think mir's got a good case, but he didn't fight a prime big nog, so he shouldn't be ranked ahead of a prime big nog.

In my eyes the top 5 are pretty firmly set, with a clear cut top 3 of Fedor, Nog and Cain. After 5 I'm open to arguments for just about all of these guys other than the reem. Even if Lesnar might be even more averse to getting punched than Reem, Randy just gave too much size to some of these monsters, and Barnett had all those juicing issues.

Post #13 » by **CPT** » Mon Jan 13, 2014 11:44 am

Prime vs. prime, not kinda-prime vs. washed up.

IMO Mir's prime was around the first Nog fight, where he was showing some ability standing up. That may not have been his physical/athletic prime, but that was when everything was coming together and he was performing at his highest level.

He was a lot closer to his prime than his opponents in his wins vs. Nog and CroCop. I know you can do this for anyone's resume, but for a guy who missed a huge chunk of his career because of a horrific motorcycle accident, Mir has had some fantastic luck. Got zombie Nog in the first fight, and in the second, Nog had him dead to rights before stupidly trying to get a spite sub, and the fight with CC was awful until that knee put everyone involved out of their misery. He also got a win against a green Lesnar with the help of some terrible reffing. He got those wins and you can't take them away, but you can't ignore the context either.

My main reason for choosing Mir to lose every fight was that he loses to almost every heavy hitter he faced, way back to Ian goddamn Freeman in his alleged prime.

I just think most of the guys on this list would hit him and he'd fold, like he's done more often than not against elite competition. He'd probably pull off a win or two against the group, just because that's how **** goes at HW, but I honestly think he'd lose each individual matchup, prime vs. prime.

skflives · Post #14 » by **skflives** » Mon Jan 13, 2014 12:37 pm

Cammo101 wrote:
CPT wrote:I don't really care what he can do to Wes Sims. Prime vs. Prime, Mir loses to every fighter on this list, IMO.

Feel free to break down why he would beat Barnett, CC, Randy, Overeem if you want, though.

How many times does a guy have to embarrass Big Nog before he leaps ahead of him on a list? Prime Mir was an absolute killer, much better than Overeem for sure. I'd be hard pressed to even known when Overeem's prime is, because he pretty much loses to every quality fighter he faces.

Mir is just one of those guys who never gets any respect. The guy knocked out Cro Cop and subbed Big Nog, yet we are supposed to pretend he magically has no chance against them. Mir has never been as good as he was when he was ripping Sylvia's arm off, and despite being an MMA Hall of Famer, he will always be a big of a what if guy. That said though, he is still a much better, more accomplished fighter than most people seem to want to give him credit for. Would be he beat everyone on this list? No. Would he go 0-10 against them? Not even close.

First of all, Big Nog and Cro Cop were good enough to be competitive by the time they entered the UFC but they were clearly lesser versions of the fighters that fought in Pride. That is indisputable. And Cro Cop had absolutely stuffed every attempt of Mir to take the fight to the ground. Mir spent the entire fight dry humping him against the cage until he caught Cro Cop with a solid knee towards the end of the third round. I am convinced he put Cro Cop to sleep while whispering sweet nothings into his ear and then struck at the perfect moment.

As for how he'd do against the top 10. Mir's a solid guy and maybe he doesn't get the right amount of respect from people here but everything about Mir speaks fringe contender/gatekeeper level fighter. Outside of his championship victory over Tim Sylvia his biggest wins were over a couple aged veterans and a guy who was fighting in his second professional fight. Otherwise he's lost to every other top contender he's ever fought and decisively. All but one of his losses were by a form of KO and only 2 of those came after the first round. Amongst the guys who knocked out Mir in the first round are monsters like Marcio Cruz, Ian Freeman and Brandon Vera. Sorry if you think Mir doesn't get the proper but achievements are enough to get you on this list but no where near the top of it. Mir has the punching power and submission skills to potentially beat everyone on this list but lacked the chin to do so and the resume to justify such a ranking.

Cammo101 · Post #15 » by **Cammo101** » Tue Jan 14, 2014 5:55 am

CPT wrote:My main reason for choosing Mir to lose every fight was that he loses to almost every heavy hitter he faced, way back to Ian goddamn Freeman in his alleged prime.

Hard hitters are his weakness, but he does hold wins over Roy Nelson, Mirko Cro Cop, Tim Sylvia, Cheick Kongo. So he has beat his fair share as well.

skflives · Post #16 » by **skflives** » Tue Jan 14, 2014 2:50 pm

Cammo101 wrote:
CPT wrote:My main reason for choosing Mir to lose every fight was that he loses to almost every heavy hitter he faced, way back to Ian goddamn Freeman in his alleged prime.

Hard hitters are his weakness, but he does hold wins over Roy Nelson, Mirko Cro Cop, Tim Sylvia, Cheick Kongo. So he has beat his fair share as well.

A fringe contender, shop worn version of a great fighter, one top 15 heavyweight of all time (based primarily on his status as a multiple time UFC champ rather than skills or resume), and a gatekeeper.

Not an impressive list.

NZB2323 · Post #17 » by **NZB2323** » Tue Jan 14, 2014 2:52 pm

Is prime Barnett Barnett on steroids?

Gregoire · Post #18 » by **Gregoire** » Tue Jan 14, 2014 2:55 pm

NZB2323 wrote:Is prime Barnett Barnett on steroids?

Yes, like Reem too and Lesnar maybe

NZB2323 · Post #19 » by **NZB2323** » Tue Jan 14, 2014 3:31 pm

CPT wrote:Since these guys are all in the same weight class, I'm going by who I think would win, because that makes the most sense to me. In an effort to do anything other than write a paper on article use by Korean learners of English, I went through the list round robin style to see what the records would come out to. Some of the logic isnt exactly airtight, and there's some rock-paper-scissors action going on in some cases, but this was a better way to get my head around it.

1. Velasquez 9-0
2. Fedor 8-1
3. CroCop 6-3 (I'm not entirely sure how that happened, but I'm okay with it)
4. JDS 5-4
5. Big Nog 5-4
6. Barnett 3-6
7. Lesnar 3-6
8. Overeem 3-6
9. Couture 1-8
10. Mir 0-9

And I think I'd favour DC over Velasquez, but I'm not sure if I'm comfortable with what that says.

Who are the four guys that JDS loses to?

Post #20 » by **CPT** » Tue Jan 14, 2014 10:33 pm

NZB2323 wrote:
CPT wrote:Since these guys are all in the same weight class, I'm going by who I think would win, because that makes the most sense to me. In an effort to do anything other than write a paper on article use by Korean learners of English, I went through the list round robin style to see what the records would come out to. Some of the logic isnt exactly airtight, and there's some rock-paper-scissors action going on in some cases, but this was a better way to get my head around it.

1. Velasquez 9-0
2. Fedor 8-1
3. CroCop 6-3 (I'm not entirely sure how that happened, but I'm okay with it)
4. JDS 5-4
5. Big Nog 5-4
6. Barnett 3-6
7. Lesnar 3-6
8. Overeem 3-6
9. Couture 1-8
10. Mir 0-9

And I think I'd favour DC over Velasquez, but I'm not sure if I'm comfortable with what that says.

Who are the four guys that JDS loses to?

Cain, Fedor, CroCop...Nog? Don't remember, but that's probably who it was.