And the majority of writers polled there disagreed. In fact, the majorty of them scored it 30-27 Tibau. That is more than a little doubt in that decision.
Tibau being referenced at this point just shows who the haters are. Khabib had a close fight against a prime roided out WW with better TDD than GSP statistically and was favoured to beat a 23 year old, nowhere near prime Khabib, and Tibau did zero damage. Actually Khabib busted him open.
Everyone else has a lot of those on their records, including Jones who was involved in 3 actual robberies where he got beat the fuck up and bloodied yet still somehow won. Reyes, Gus and Santos.
BJ’s career as a whole is much more impressive than Khabib.
Fought across eras. The run he had of just lw fights that went Serra/Uno/Gomi/Pulver/Stevenson/Sherk/KenFlo/Diego is incredible. Anyone who says those wins aren’t as or more impressive than Dustin and Justin doesn’t know the context imo.
Yeah he went up to ww and lost a few between there but who cares. Also he never missed weight.
Khabib has the better record, which is unarguable, but the rest is arguable.
Prime BJ would have beat down Iaquinta, not spam failed takedowns at him for 25 minutes and fail to finish him. He would have hurt him.
Sean Sherk would have been stylistically favored against everyone Khabib beat and therefore he can be considered the best LW opponent either of them faced. BJ sparked him. (I think Khabib would have also beat Sherk, but he wouldn’t have beat him down and hurt him, which is true dominance, like BJ did.)
I do think Khabib beats BJ head to head, however.
Most of which is subjective. Like I said, the only thing we know objectively is that it’s a tie until someone surpasses the record.
I actually don’t. I like Khabib a lot. I like his top game more than BJ’s. BJ’s guard was better. BJ’s back mount was different, probably technically superior.