So everyone in the other thread pretty much agrees that the top 3 are Khabib, Charles and BJ. The nice thing about having it whittled down to 3 guys is that we can enumerate all of the orderings. How do you see it? I’ve got:
BJ
Charles
Khabib
BJ 1, Charles 2, Khabib 3
BJ 1, Khabib 2, Charles 3
Charles 1, BJ 2, Khabib 3
Charles 1, Khabib 2, BJ 3
Khabib 1, BJ 2, Charles 3
Khabib 1, Charles 2, BJ 3
0voters
Link to the other thread (that I didn’t want to derail or bury the poll):
Those guys are great, but not top 3. I built this poll off the conversation in the other thread… which seemed strongly to favour the top three I’ve listed here. I don’t think Kawajiri even came up (I love the guy), and Gomi only came up in passing.
Edit: if I’d listed all of the possibilities for top 5, we’d have 5! = 120 poll choices.
I think Gomi’s run is better than Khabib’s. He beat Sato, Chris Brennan, Ralph, Crazy Horse, Jens, Azeredo, Kawajiri, Sakurai, Marcus Aurelio, Danzig, Bang, and lost to BJ, Hellboy, Nick, Florian, Nate, Diego, and Guida. That’s an impressive list of opponents, win or lose.
I can’t do it man. 90% of me shitting on Khabib is just trolling, but he legitimately has to be considered top 3. Especially if he’d hung around, his list of guys that he’d lost to would look pretty awesome, as well I’m sure he would have picked up a few more big wins.
The guy should have found a way to fight GSP. That fight needed to happen.
Yeah I was curious about his record. Talk about a crazy turn for the worse. His record was never one of those elite “20 and 1” type records. At his peak he was 15-4. That’s the guy who had already fought GSP, already taken the belt from Sherk, already embarrassed the 155 division, already KO’ed Hughes. Then he met Frankie at 15-4, and then he went 1-10 in his next 11 fights. It’s hard to say that 15-4 BJ should have retired. But that guy that did the twinkle toes thing against Frankie… that guy obviously had mental issues.
On the back of his opponents and how he went up in weight so many times, I’m sticking with him as the 155 GOAT. Not the GOAT of the 155 division. But, the best fighter who ever spent most of their career at 155.
The GSP fight was something Khabib was aggressively pursuing until his father died but was cockblocked by Dana.
The reality is probably that Khabib fell out of love with the sport and competition. It’s probably a symptom of having to train all day since he was a child and having to watch what you eat since your early 20’s.
I shit on the guy non stop, but out of all the big and little factors, the one that probably stood above all others was that Dana wanted to schedule it to optimize UFC wealth. I.e., they didn’t want to derail Khabib while he was ruling the division. I don’t blame them for operating in their own best interest, but that fight died by micro-optimization, and the fans got screwed over.
GSP was never going to be able to fight Khabib the moment he left MW after he beat Bisping. That doesn’t necessarily mean the UFC thought he was going to beat Khabib, but why would they even take that chance? LW is their money division after all.
Im not a huge gomi fan. Are you talking about that no contest he had against the guy who couldnt even put down the bong long enough to pass a drug test?