How do you rank the top 20 HW's ever?

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Not in terms of what they achieved but in terms of who would be the favorites to win vs anyone or most likely to win a GP vs the field.

It would be very difficult to rank the best HW’s ever.

You are talking Fedor, Big Nog, Barnett, Crocop, Kharitonov,

Werdum, Overeem, DC, Sylvia, Arlovski, Randy, Coleman, Igor, Schilt

Brock, Carwin, Mir, JDS, Cain, Stipe, Bader, Rumble

Jones, Pavlovich, Ngannou etc…

You got to consider each fighter at their very best and then you are basically seeding them in twenty spots from the favorite to beat the field to the worst one at #20.

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  1. Fedor
  2. Cain or Werdum
  3. Stipe

The rest are a toss up though. Stipes reign is extremely overrated though.

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I agree Stipe’s reign is overrated and even after the Cain wars, JDS beat Stipe.

I have JDS higher than Stipe on my list even if I have not tried to construct it yet.

Styles make fights and everyone on their best day makes things very complicated.

Its a hard list to make and of course people won’t agree.

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The closest thing we have seen was Pride where Fedor came out on top and the Strikeforce grandprix where DC came out ok top.

And I think the two are also the most skilled heavyweights we have seen.

DC beat himself in the Stipe fights, and he was way past his prime during their last match.

  1. Fedor
  2. DC
  3. Cain
  4. Overeem
  5. Too many to choose from
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I do think Stipe gets more credit than he should. I like your list

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I agree DC was well past his prime in those fights. Those were DC’s last two fights. We almost never see a good version of a given fighter in their last few fights. We could make a list of hundreds of great fighters who looked terrible in their last five fights.

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Its really a damn shame we have seen zero fights between Jones, Ngannou, Aspinall and Pavlovich even though they were all under contract with the UFC for a while there.

Even if Jones retires after this Stipe fight, at least we still have a chance to see Pavlovich vs Aspinall in their primes I guess.

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(In UFC) DC’s only HW wins are over Mir, Nelson, Lewis and one lucky one over Stipe. He may be top twenty because he was a title holder, but he’s not top five. The HW division was pretty good when he was around and he fought nobody.

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Fedor
Werdum
Big Nog
Stipe
Ubereem
DC
Cain
Lesnar
Ngannou
Cro Cop

HMBarnett

There’s a top ten I did quick, takes into account both head to head ability and resume. Jones only has one fight at HW so far and against a guy with zero wrestling so not enough data yet for me to rate him. Werdum subbed Fedor, Cain, and Noguiera which is insane.
Peak Mirko in a ring head to head could beat anyone on this list as well. Lesnar pre sickness I rate highly head to head.

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You got a good top ten there but I don’t think DC, Brock or Stipe are favorites to beat the JDS that beat Werdum, Carwin, Cain and six others in under an hour total as part of his 9-0 run.

JDS beat Stipe even after the loses to Cain.

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Yeah JDS needs to be on the list, completely missed him. He has a better body of work than Cain overall