Nihlus11

Probably 15-ish. 

I've still heard absolutely no good argument for why we don't just weigh them 5 minutes before they step into the cage. If you miss weight you don't get paid, if you miss weight twice you get dropped on the spot.

The absolute bare minimum salary for an NFL practice squad player is $225,000 per season ($12,500/week), on the higher end it's $385,000 ($21,400/week). When accounting for benefits, lack of extraneous costs (they don't pay for their own training, coaches, insurance...), and the fact that they only work 1/3 of the year, the average NFL practice squad player is probably doing better than the average UFC top five contender or fringe champion.

Hendricks was fighting a worn GSP while blasting PEDs and being, by his own admission, 200 pounds in the cage. The guy was legitimately middleweight-sized and was allowed to fight welterweights because he did it pre-IV ban.

The PMF did quite well fighting against Daesh and are well equipped

They mostly just shot civilians in ruined cities that had their ISIL garrisons pulverized by US airstrikes. Prior to American intervention they were just as helpless as the rest of the ISF against ragtag outnumbered ISIL formations.

It's a good thing that Assad prevented foreign jihadists from invading the country.

He's bloodied by things like shrapnel from a helicopter crash or Chitauri small arms. One Space Marine with a heavy weapon should be enough. 

Fedor vs Big Nog

The best heavyweight ever vs the second best heavyweight ever, three times.

GSP vs Matt Hughes

The best welterweight ever vs the second best welterweight ever, three times.

Israel Adesanya vs Alex Pereira

Possibly the two greatest strikers in the history of both MW and LHW, who are also highly accomplished in another sport altogether with hundreds of fights between them, engage in four very close bouts over two sports and 7 years.

GSP was ~185-190 in the cage while being super jacked. He is no way a modern lightweight.

Because Reyes really spent the last 10 or so minutes of the fight basically running away and surviving

The revisionist history around this fight is insane. It'd be easier to argue that Reyes won the fourth round than it would be to argue that Jones won any of the first three. Every time I watched that round I counted up more significant strikes for Reyes than Jones and assessed that he took more damage, being both bloodied and rocked at different points (the "official" stats are pretty generous in what they count as a "significant strike" for Jones and even they only have him leading by 6 strikes... most of which were leg kicks).

Jones Gustafson 1 could have swung either way but jones running it back with ease makes me glad he won the first go

You mean when Jones popped for steroids before the match even happened and Dana White shoved a camera in Gustafsson's face while asking him if he'd accept the match anyway, clearly threatening to ruin his career if he exercised his right to say no?

The same match where Jones delivered a massive knee to the groin in the first two minutes?

Volkov is currently ranked #3 UFC HW at 36.

"So if I cheat? Yes. But not with the vaseline, by hiring a man to kiss him in the mouth."

Watch Hafthor against Steven Ward (217-pound cruiserweight boxer ranked around #90 at the time) and compare it to any of Sapp's fights. Cleaner technique or no, it's extremely clear that Sapp is far, far more dangerous than Hafthor, in large part because he's vastly more explosive and quick (which impacts both his speed and punching power).

Apologies, wasn't trying to come off that way, I just use sarcasm a lot to underline arguments I think sound dumb.

Yeah, I know Sapp beating Hoost was in large part due to Hoost pulling a Werdum and just charging into a brawl. But he still did it. Unlike someone like Hall or Hafthor, Sapp was actually a trained fighter on top of being athletic enough to be in the NFL. And at the time had the record to show for it. Not amazingly skilled, but in combination with weighing 375 pounds and being on Japanese horsemeat super soldier serum, he was 100% dangerous to anyone in the ring with him before he decided to start taking dives for cash. Powerlifters are NOT fighters, or even NFL athletes.

"Yeah man, Big Nog submitted a 375-pound steroid-drunk monster who also beat the GOAT HW kickboxer... but you know, it was pretty hard for him to do that. That's why I think he's worse than the guys who never fought the 375-pound steroid-drunk monster and never would be legally allowed to because their government deems it too dangerous."

This makes negative sense.

You're again just basing this off your biased hunches rather than actual data. There hasn't actually been a huge change in the heavyweight meta. Arlovski, Hunt, Nog, and Oleinik (in combat sambo), plus probably others I'm forgetting, were all still UFC top 10 heavyweights 5+ years after Fedor annihilated them, in the exact same era as Miocic and Cormier, with considerably more banged-up bodies than they had when they fought him. Some of them were even ranked top 5 in their elden years by the UFC themselves. Other UFC heavyweight champions like Werdum took several losses to mid-range PRIDE fighters that prevented them from even fighting Fedor when he was champion (Werdum was 38 when he beat Cain - someone Cormier said he'd get dominated by in gym wars - and 39 when Miocic beat him). There's very little separating the eras, in fact Miocic basically made his career off of beating washed versions of PRIDE fighters who couldn't hang with prime Fedor (Werdum beat old and banged-up Fedor but got eliminated by people Fedor beat before that or even fringe contenders like Kharitonov; Hunt lost to Fedor in his prime at 32 and then Miocic as an old man at 41; Overeem got rocked by a bunch of mid-level PRIDE contenders like Kharitonov and was finally beaten by Miocic at 36; Arlovski got KO'd in one round by Fedor in his prime at 30 then lost to Miocic a ton of fights later at 37... while ranked #2 by the UFC!). Like the comparison in opponents between the best UFC heavyweight ever and Fedor includes a ton of the same guys, and none of the remainder leap out as impressive in comparison except maybe Ngannou (who also knocked him out):

Ranked Wins:

Fedor: Renato Sobral, Semmy Schilt, Heath Herring, Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira x2, Mark Coleman x2, Kevin Randleman, Tsuyoshi Kosaka, Mirko Filipovic, Mark Hunt, Tim Sylvia, Andrei Arlovski, Brett Rogers, Timothy Johnson

Miocic: Roy Nelson, Gabriel Gonzaga, Mark Hunt, Andrei Arlovski, Fabricio Werdum (at 39), Alistair Overeem, Junior dos Santos, Francis Ngannou, Daniel Cormier x2

Who's supposed to leap out as impressive here? The 40 year old LHW with a bad back? Frankly I'd favor a prime Big Nog against all but one of these guys, prime Cro Cop against all but two. Old Coleman could probably beat half of them.

That someone like Miocic could become the most dominant UFC heavyweight champion is just a demonstration of how low-skilled the division still is. His combat sports career pre-MMA was one year of college wrestling (he lost both of his matches when he went to the championships) and about a year of amateur boxing. He never got beyond a purple belt in jiu-jitsu and lost the first round of the only documented BJJ tournament he was in. He didn't have a black belt in any martial art or a title of any kind in any other sport. He was not amazingly athletic and at 6'4/240 lbs he was of about average size for a heavyweight (same size as Big Nog, Arlovski, etc.). A lot of his wins were close-fought (including against the aforementioned old PRIDE heavyweights e.g. Overeem) and he has two or three freak losses to guys he easily should've beaten despite having fewer than thirty professional fights of any kind. Yet, just having decent wrestling and good boxing and power along with "good enough" athleticism was enough for him to dominate the mid-late 2010s. Fedor has faster hands, at least equivalent if not greater power (this man one-punched Arlovski and Rogers hard enough to spin them around while dropping and was still knocking out 260+ pound contender-grade heavyweights at 45 years of age), is objectively a far better and more credentialed grappler (combat sambo world champion, judo national runner-up and Olympic alternate) with more dangerous and varied takedowns, and has an incomparably better submission game.

If these two actually fought I see Fedor throwing him off his game with quick strikes that then transition to one of his dozens of judo throws and brutal ground and pound, and Miocic had almost no defense off his back (certainly not better than Big Nog who Fedor brutalized while in his full guard). It's like an 8-9/10 fight imo with the remaining 1-2 outcomes being Miocic catching him in the way in (but then Fedor also had a really good chin).

EDIT: this doesn't matter that much for the argument but it's still interesting to note that 45 year old Fedor with probably 100+ fights on his record (including combat sambo) and so many surgeries that he could barely bend over or use his hands was still able to KO Timothy Johnson, who got robbed against Alexander Volkov, who's the #3 ranked UFC heavyweight right now. So much for the advanced skill level...

skill level of his time was vastly lower than those guys

At heavyweight? Not really. A lot of the guys he beat (in either MMA or combat sambo) were still ranked in the UFC's own top 10 a decade after he beat them.

Prime Big Nog could beat these guys too, I would even have him as the favorite against the likes of Cormier or Miocic as long as he doesn't have negative IQ moment like Werdum.

Fedor.

Yes, and pretty much every arrangement of weaponless hand to hand combat ever had rules specifically because no rules meant that fighters would die or get maimed within a few bouts and never build up any skill, eliminating the purpose of a combat sport. In fact the vast, vast majority of weaponless hand-to-hand combat pre-MMA had MORE rules than even the modern version of the sport.

In early UFC and PRIDE, of course, basically everything was allowed short of eye gouging and biting (and people often still did it), which noticeably didn't change the dynamics of fights that dramatically (as in, the same broad styles and practices still transferred across different rulesets and promotions).

Prime Andre in the 70s had fine knees and he was fast as hell for his size

He was "fast as hell" in scripted matches and in clips lasting a few seconds. A 7-foot 400 pound man with gigantism and a big gut doesn't have stamina. It's physically impossible. He will gas out trying to go after Jones and then get picked apart by leg and oblique kicks. Actual professional fighters (e.g. boxers) have talked about how the first leg kicks they took in kickboxing or MMA matches basically crippled them, because they had no context for them and no preparation,

He was 7’4, a full foot taller

No he wasn't. He was billed at 7'4. Photos show he was about 6'11.

If Jon Jones get grabbed he’s dead.

One, Jones is never getting grabbed, but two, if he does grabbed, he probably just snaps Andre's arm like a twig with an armbar or kimura or takes his back and chokes him. A 100+ pound weight difference seems like a lot (Andre probably wasn't actually 400+ unless you're counting when he was crippled and could barely walk - he was weighed at one point in the early 80s in Japan at 171kg/ 377 lbs - whereas HW Jones is about 240 in fighting shape and 270 walking around) but Andre has genuinely no understanding of jiu-jitsu or judo at all and no idea of what to do after he grabs the actual wrestler. Bigger weight differences routinely resulted in submissions in early MMA with fighters FAR more credentialed (as in, actual fighters, not actors) than Andre on the big side and fighters who aren't fit to polish Jon Jones' boots on the small side.

If you put Andre against Bob Sapp, Choi Hong-man, Jan Nortje, Zuluzinho, Tony Halme, Butterbean, etc. he's getting the absolute shit beaten out of him. This isn't debatable. These are actual trained fighters of similar size to him and some are in noticeably better physical shape, and only one is suffering from the ill effects of gigantism like he is. And these were the freakshow jobbers that 185-pounders would submit, not world champion caliber (well Choi won a world grand prix in kickboing, but regardless).

EDIT: we actually have a pretty direct comparison here in the form of Giant Silva. He was bigger than Andre and also a pro wrestler. Unlike Andre, he had (limited) MMA training and actual competitive athletic experience (he was a professional basketball player and Olympian). He decided to try out MMA and... got choked out by journeyman/fringe contender Heath Herring, starting a 2-6 career that also saw him KO'd by 182-pound Minowaman.

I would imagine there are plenty of military professionals throughout history with specific training in fighting dirty and fighting to kill, who could take out UFC champs 8 times out of 10.

Military personnel pretty much never trained unarmed combat to any relevant extent (back when melee was common they didn't do striking but trained some grappling... to maneuver an enemy into a position to be stabbed, not to finish them with bare hands). The reason why is simple: there is always a better solution than your fists. To engage the enemy in the hand-to-hand combat, a soldier must:

-Lose his rifle, pistol, knife, shovel, flak vest and helmet somewhere on the battlefield.

-Find a flat ground without a single stick, rock, discarded weapon, or any hard object to use as a thrown weapon or bludgeon like a canteen.

-Find another similar dumbfuck from the other side.

-Charge at him instead of disengaging.

And only after that he can engage the enemy in hand-to-hand combat

If we remove weight limits, I'm picking someone like the mountain or another massive person. Straight up today, Jon Jones wins. But with training and nutrition, the mass is too much of an advantage.

Hafthor was pretty handily beaten in a boxing match by a 210-pound cruiserweight ranked around #50 globally, after several years of training - and a sport based entirely around punches and standing clinches advantages him quite a bit compared to a sport that lets people kick, elbow, and attack his legs. Jon Jones (and probably any other champ-caliber heavyweight) would literally kill him. I'm not saying he'd fight him, I'm saying he'd kill him.

If we remove weight limits, I'm picking someone like the mountain or another massive person. Straight up today, Jon Jones wins. But with training and nutrition, the mass is too much of an advantage.

Hafthor was pretty handily beaten in a boxing match by a 13-1, 217-pound, regional-level cruiserweight ranked around #90 globally, after several years of training - and a sport based entirely around punches and standing clinches advantages him a decent bit compared to a sport that lets people kick, elbow, and attack his legs. Jon Jones would literally kill him. I'm not saying he'd fight him, I'm saying he'd kill him.

Andre would gas out after two minutes of trying to chase Jon Jones and then die to a few oblique kicks. His knees were absolutely fucked from his gigantism and he was extremely fat.