And what did Jones do by ducking elite HW competition all those years?
Fedor still has more finishes than Jones has fights.
And Hendo lands that H-bomb on anyone most are going down.
Fighting past his prime doesn’t take away from the greatest HW run in MMA history.
What isn’t impressive is purposely avoiding an absolutely stacked HW division for years, then jumping in after most of the killers were either done or on their way out, to claim a “dual championship” for your legacy – then defend against a 42 year old who is coming off a loss and hasn’t fought in 3 years.
Nothing says “GOAT” like ducking killers and padding your record with long layoffs.
Dude has 3 finishes in the last 11 years.
Good grief.
Jones made his legacy by beating smaller LHWs on the back sides of their careers, and 2 fights against DC.
Lets just say we agree with Dana, fine Jones is the LHW GOAT. Cool. Good for him. Let him piss off into retirement. He is super inactive and for the most part irrelevant in today’s scene. I dont care about seeing Jones fight anyone but Aspinall at this point. If he doesnt want to, thats fine. Let him fight Stipe in an legends fight and strip Jon of his HW belt. Jon is the ONLY “champ” that I know of that wont fight the interim champ to unify the belts. Aspinall is the only HW champ that is defending the belt vs active HWs. So he is the champ in my and everyones eyes. Make him the undisputed if Jon wont defend his title in his first fight back.
Fedor has a lot of questionable guys on there. Brett rogers, hong man choi, zuluzinho, schilt… along with smaller guys like jones has in arona (which i think he lost), lindland, sobral etc…
Pride big nog was an animal but hendo beat him, i dont think any version of hendo beats jones. Henderson is also my favourite fighter.
Throw in the losses to bader, big foot and mitrione and it seals it for me.
Jones has 0 losses - arguably reyes, santos and gustaffason run him close.
But Jon came in and settled the division down beating a bunch of guys all well past their primes. Shogun, Rampage, Machida…none of these were within 3 years of their prime when he beat them.
Fedor dominated the heavyweight division at the period of time when heavyweight was as talent packed and exciting as ever.
I don’t know why anyone would grumble about the Arona fight in this conversation. Fedor was in his fourth fight and years away from being the number one heavyweight in 2000. For comparison at that point in his career Jon was fighting a guy who was 1-3 at the time named Ryan Verett who retired 3-4. I bet he wouldn’t have looked like a million bucks against 2000 Arona, who won ADCC that year without having a point scored on him
Yeah ok fair point, arona was a beast and in a purple patch.
I bring it up mainly for the weight divison issue. Everyone goes on about jones being the bigger man in the divison but he made weight his whole career.
We’re talking about 22 fights over about 7 and a half years going from his first Pride fight to the Rogers fight.
Rogers was coming off KO over Arlovski, plus that wasn’t Pride run Fedor anyways.
Choi is a fucking monster with some very legis kickboxing wins.
Zulu is one of 3 guys Fedor fought that could actually be called a “can”. But it’s not like he had been inactive otherwise. So let’s call it 19 fights instead of 22? … Umm, ok.
Lindland was a great fighter just a smaller weight class, yeah – and Jones fought Sonnen…
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Yeah, tough as they are I don’t think guys like Rampage and Machida were beating Big Nog and Cro Cop.
Look what happened in the Coleman/Shogun fight – and look what happened when the best LHW of the era fought Cro Cop.
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Hendo is one of my favorites too, but that was one of the “Decision Dan” fights.
A controversial split decision in rings.
Then Nog subbed him in Pride.
I also believe that the UFC did everything they could to protect Jones from Hendo after the first one didn’t happen.
Yes, Jones would have been the favorite, and in a contest of MMA Jones would win.
But the H-Bomb was a big x-factor, and Dan could land it with either hand from multiple angles, and it’s night-night Jones.
So they gave him 3 round fights vs guys like Rashad and Machida – knowing Hendo was likely to get out-pointed in quick fights by guys who were good at avoiding serious exchanges when they had to.
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I don’t see what that has to do with it.
Tito KO’d old Chuck, but that’s not something that would have happened back in the day – and even Tito knows it.
I don’t necessarily view choosing to go out on top as being much more impressive.
It’s a legacy move.
If Fedor had retired after the Arlovski fight, nobody would question his GOATness.
IMO peak ability Fedor is the GOAT – not only because of his run – but I also think, prime vs prime, Fedor beats Jones.
He’s also failed to finish something like 7/10 fights going back over a decade.
He’s been padding his record between layoffs, and ducked the killer UFC HW division until just the right time.
Nah…fuck that.
Again…Fedor has more finishes than Jones has fights.
His run was more dominant.
