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Originally Posted by mma #1 fan  as a noob i'd love for you to tell me how Jon should not be on this made up list but fedor should be.
PLEASE DO TELL |
Putting Fitch on a top pound for pound list is a profound illustration of not having any clue of what pound for pound means.
A) he's enormous. He fights at WW, with a huge size advantage over virtually all of his opponents. He is one of the few people Georges has faced who was actually bigger than the champion. All the criticism that Georges or Anderson have faced in p4p ranking based on employing size advantages is even more applicable to Fitch, because he lacks their relative skillsets to lend legitimacy to their individual claims.
B) he's stunningly one-dimensional. He's a world-class wrestler, and has strong submission defense; but he's never progressed beyond average submissions and average striking. Believe me, I wanted him to. I lost money on him when he faced GSP back in the day, in the hope that he was a better striker than he'd illustrated, and that he was just winning fights with a dominating top position so as not to tip his hand. I was wrong.
so regardless of which school of thought you belong to regarding pound-for-pound, you'd want someone who was either very well-rounded and a threat in most, if not all, disciplines--of like Anderson or Georges--or you'd want someone who was at least well rounded and was facing size disadvantages and winning anyway, like Frankie Edgar.
Jon is neither. He's an enormous WW with one dimension that he uses effectively. That's it. Even at his peak, when he was universally ranked #2 WW in the world, he did not belong on anyone's p4p lists. Don't get me wrong, I like Fitch. I'm one of the only people I know who actually enjoys watching him fight, and I think he's still a world-class WW. But he's just not p4p elite.
To think of it another way, Penn isn't generally ranked on anyone's p4p lists. But he's well-rounded, he's at least a credible threat in both striking and grappling, right? And yet he fought Fitch to a stand still. He gave up a huge size disadvantage and outstruck and outgrappled him for two rounds. So imagine if Penn was the same size as Fitch. Penn was outstriking Jon 10 to 1 in through the first 2 rounds, and stifling 80% of the TD attempts.
Imagine if Penn didn't have to overcome a 6 or 7" height/reach disadvantage to do that. Imagine if he didn't have a size/strength disadvantage to wear him down to the point where he gave up TD's in the third. So by both definitions, either focusing on size or versitility in being a threat, Penn is much stronger pound for pound.
Fitch is a great fighter. He's a world-class WW. He's not p4p and never has been.
rh
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