Olivera’s past two fights have been incredible legacy fights. He now has title finishes over Chandler, Dustin, and Gaethje. That’s incredible. I think he has a better resume than Tony, Dustin, Gaethje, and Conor.
As a rule, I judge greatness by looking at the best parts of fighters’ careers. Muhammad Ali’s, Fedor’s, and BJ Penn’s late career losses don’t affect their greatness in my eyes. I similarly don’t care about Islam’s and Usman’s early losses.
I think Olivera is second all-time. His title wins are so much better than BJ’s. I just don’t think it’s arguable. His win list is better than Dustin’s at this point, and he doesn’t have Dustin’s losses. I think I go:
Khabib
Charles
BJ
Dustin (Edit: Wasa-b convinced me to switch BJ and Dustin because of BJ’s win over Gomi).
Aside from the fact that BJ was the undisputed man at LW even tho his defenses weren’t that many, for example, his domination of Gomi outside the UFC (even if that pre-Fireball kid), so not sure Dustin should be higher but I think you have it right with Charles now #2 and if he beats Islam, will have a claim to #1.
You’re right. The win over Gomi, which I was not considering, should have BJ ahead of Charles. I also agree that if Charles beats Islam, he’s number 1 all-time and should get Khabib out of retirement.
Yeah I was thinking Top 3 (in no order yet) are BJ, Khabib, and Charles…
But Frankie has wins over 2 of them…even though it is an early/mid stage Charles and a late stage BJ. He is getting into Territory now where he is fighting too long and performing worse that it is hurting peoples perception of him but he deserves to be higher than Poirier, Tony, and RDA in my opinion for his Prime Run
I’ve also stood next to all 4 of these guys up close and Frankie is by far the smallest. Not even close which makes him even more impressive that he hung with those guys.
Frankie isn’t even a big BW today. His first win over BJ took BJ out of his prime. He was on fire up to then. So I think he should get credit for thr 2 wins over prime BJ.
To me, the biggest mistake of Frankie’s career was “losing weight” rather than cutting weight on his trips down to 145 and 135. I also think he was best at 155, for whatever reason.
He has to be up there for sure he has most submissions of all weights, most finishes and is close to most wins ever.
That has gotta count for something