DC beat Stipe and lost to him 2x as well. He also works for the UFC and knows where his bread is buttered. Its in his best interest to cite Stipe as as the GOAT both as a retired fighter who fought him three times and an employee of the UFC.
Fedor was undefeated for a decade.
15-3 vs UFC champs and title challengers in his career.
11-2 vs wrestling and judo Olympians, NCAA champs, ADCC champs and K1 GP champs
23 year career.
Was a LHW competing at HW, gave up hundreds of lbs on fight night in his career.
Stipe was undefeated for three years.
8-3 vs UFC champs and title challengers in his career
5-1 vs wrestling and judo Olympians, NCAA champs, ADCC champs and K1 GP champs
11 year career.
Never gave up the size at HW that Fedor did.
Fedor was undefeated 3x as long as Stipe, beat twice as many UFC champs and title challengers, beat twice as many Olympians, ADCC champs, K1 champs etc… and his career was twice as long.
Nice try DC but no.
“I don’t believe (Fedor’s) the greatest heavyweight of all time,” Cormier said on his ESPN show “DC & RC.” “I think that belongs to Stipe Miocic, but only because Cain Velasquez was injured so much. I think in terms of skill, there’s no one that ever matched Cain Velasquez at heavyweight.
“But I believe that Stipe Miocic’s title defenses and the long reign that he had at the top of the division puts him atop. But Fedor is in the top five, and I don’t think that’s anything to be ashamed of.”
Stipe has only fought 3x a year in three years while in the UFC. Seven out of eleven years Stipe has been in the UFC he has only fought once and last year he did not fight at all.
One year in PRIDE Fedor fought 4x and another year he fought 5x. Even when in Strikeforce, Fedor fought 4x in 2011.
Even though his career has been twice as long and he is six years older than Stipe, Fedor has still had more fights than Stipe over the past five years.
Stipe fights once a year and Fedor fought Coleman, Randleman, Ogawa and Big Nog (twice) in a single year. Hell, he fought Ogawa and Big Nog on the same night.
Stipe has done a lot but you can’t objectively compare it to what Fedor did.
The length of Stipe’s career plus the length of DC’s career combined is still a year less than the length of Fedor’s career. Just to put it in perspective.
Fedor also won 6 combat sambo national championships and 3 combat sambo world championships during the course of his pro MMA career and he was competing in combat sambo championships for the first twelve years of his pro MMA career.
For the last 5+ years Stipe has fought the same 2 guys 5 times and only those 2 guys. Before that he fought a bunch of has-beens. LOL @ Stipe being GOAT.
I’m listening to todays episode of MMA Junkie podcast and they’re talking about this exact topic. Fedor or Stipe as HW GOAT
They said they believed fedor’s prime ended with the Hendo loss
To my surprise they both leaned Stipe, as HW GOAT. Then they talked about who would win in their primes, and one of them leaned Fedor, and the other leaned, Stipe. They also said it depends on which rules they fought in
If fedor’s prime ended at the Hendo loss I would argue stipe has the “better losses” between the two of them while fedor of course had the longer win streak full of great wins
One loss doesn’t define a career. I.e. GSP vs Serra. Fedor had a wreckless style of fighting. It’d result in a loss sooner or later. I think the only thing close to perfection in fighting sports I can think of is Alexander Karelin and Chris Eubank Sr, and they’ve both had losses, too.
Stipe certainly had more UFC HW title defenses but, for overall career I would still say Fedor. I even think you could make a good argument for Werdum over Stipe, based on his overall career too (not counting strictly BJJ) and Werdum was in the UFC and its HW champ. Albeit, Stipe beat him, but I think his overall career is still better than Stipe.
Stipe doesn’t even crack the top five all time heavyweight list. He might make it into the top ten.
His resume will also always be marred by the fact that DC gave him two of those wins by refusing to wrestle at all. It’s not his fault…but that’s the reality of things.