Looks like fightmatrix considered Rodrigo a welterweight before the BJ fight. But he was ranked #3 there. Huge feather in BJ’s cap that everyone forgot about.
Multiple people have explained to you why this is a dumb way of evaluating a career, yet your persist, typing the same thing over and over again like a reptile bumping into glass as it tries to advance, never learning or understanding why it doesn’t work.
That really seems kind of weird though. You don’t think fighting an average 170’er is harder than fighting an average 155’er? If anything you should put a big plus sign next to the 170 fights, not remove them.
I think you have to take into consideration how much better some of the competition was. BJ’s wrestling and BJJ opponents weren’t just a little better, they were a lot better. I can see BJ’s striking opponents hanging a lot better with Khabib’s striking opponents than Khabib’s wrestling and BJJ oppoenents hanging with BJ’s wrestling and BJJ opponents.
So, we disagree on: (1) whether to count losses as evidence of a fighter’s all-time status; and (2) whether to count wins outside LW when deciding BJ’s status all-time at LW. Fair enough.
You say that Khabib never fought a great grappler. I think he fought a few. But, I think it’s fair enough to say that he never fought that secret sauce of an extremely dangerous grappler with very good striking. A good comparison: until Weidman, Anderson Silva had fought good wrestlers and good grapplers (Hendo, Chael, Lutter, Nate M.). But, he hadn’t fought that special (and extremely rare) combination of offensive minded wrestler with a great submission game and solid striking.
For me, it comes down to wins at LW. And I think that RDA/Dustin/Justin/Connor/Raging Al/Johnson/Barboza is just a much better list than Pulver/Florian/Sherk/Diego/Stevenson/Gomi
That’s my whole point! Anderson cleared out his division, and until Weidman, it was a unicorn. Khabib did the same – destroying everybody, but never a “submission guy with great striking” because it didn’t exist outside of Tony and Nate (and, later, Charles).
Agreed on both accounts. I think Khabib is the LW GOAT and he likely woulda had more defenses as his road to the title was delayed longer than usual. I think he woulda beaten Tony. That said, he did leave when he had far from cleaned out the division. Thats no knock on him as an individual but fair game when we rate GOAT legacies. And yes, he absolutely left when Charles was coming up who even before his striking emerged to where it is now, still had the BJJ sub game that would have been a stylistic challenge to his top heavy sub grappling game.
And @wiggum, yes for sure on Weidman for Anderson. It was also said for a long time for Fedor as well a wrestler like Randy who wasnt as sub-ignorant like Coleman/Randleman. Or even Barnett who wasnt the strongest wrestler but was even better at subs than Randy. Of course not Fedor’s fault that fight didnt happen and he was up for fighting Randy too.
To Khabib’s credit, Gaethje was also supposed to be a stylistic challenge for him - the dangerous striker with D1 TDD.