greatest middleweight fighters all time

[oats]

Originally Posted by Eŋg

cung is questionable - though he is a personal favourite on style alone, souza and filho (incredible streak, few quality wins) are borderline/interchangeable with a lombard. up until a fight ago i wouldn't have said rockhold deserved the nod -- him and weidman could still be considered 'growing' talents.

i feel like you should have considered sakuraba (not a strict MW?) and even prime misaki. it's great that you showed bustamante some love - criminally underrated.

but it's essentially an opinion piece, and it's well-written. good shit.

the main metric I use is major organization championship wins, which is why Le (and others) are up there, and guys like Misaki and Belfort aren't. Misaki does have the Pride Grand Prix win, but only because he replaced Filho (who beat him), and Belfort's only championship win was at 205.

Saku is one of my first ballot HOFers if it were up to me, but he doesn't quite fit in anywhere weight wise. He routinely fought in open weight fights against significantly bigger opponents, usually who were at or around 205. He doesn't show up on any of these articles lol, which I'm sure will draw the ire of commenters, but he also never had any championship wins, and there are 10 LHW's who have 2 or more.

but yeah, it is basically an opinion/statistical breakdown piece, so it's meant to be more fun than rigorous analysis.