The 20 Greatest Mixed Martial Artists of All Time: Introduction

Why now?

Why choose this moment to decide who the greatest mixed martial artists of all time are? Why not allow more time to pass, to allow more bona fide all-time greats to emerge, to allow more great fights that really show the mettle of the combatants, that allow us to really gauge just how great they are?

Simply put: why not?

We have seen MMA transition from the early days, the human cock-fighting era to the more streamlined, modern version. Consider it the same transition as boxing had from the bareknuckle days to the post-Walker Law era, when rules and regulations were put in place to make the sport more regulated but actually spawned perhaps the most competitive era in the sports history.

The 1920s, 30s and 40s saw Tony Canzoneri, Harry Greb, Barney Ross and Joe Louis prosper, with astounding records that put them near the top of pound-for-pound lists even today. The ruleset allowed for more competitiveness and less freak show fights, a scoring system that fighters could fight within the realms of rather than stalling for a pre-determined draw. Look at the innumerable ‘newspaper decisions’ of the early days of gloved boxing and then look at the second fight between Royce Gracie and Ken Shamrock: wild as the era was, it didn’t always lead to satisfactory contests.

But ask boxing historian Nat Fleischer (1887-1972) who were the greatest fighters on his list and you would still see the all-time greats of yesteryear: Joe Gans, Bob Fitzsimmons, Jack Johnson, James J. Jeffries. Even decades after his first charge won a world title, all-time great boxing trainer Ray Arcel felt Benny Leonard, Jack Dempsey and Pete Herman were better to his educated eye than Roberto Duran, Ray Leonard and Marvin Hagler.

So we had to ask the question: do Royce Gracie’s incredible feats of endurance in the early days of mixed martial arts mean as much as even the average MMA fighters victories over more rounded opposition today? Just how much worth do we lend to title reign of Matt Hughes when our eyes tell us we’re watching a sport in transition rather than at its peak?

Oftentimes when you ask for opinions on all the all-time greats of any sport you will hear the same old arguments: “It was better in the old days”, “They had it harder back then”, etc.

That may be true, but in MMA we have a unique situation: simply put, some of us writing about the sport and caring enough to offer up our own ideas of who is the greatest of all time were there for the early days. The advent of the videotape—let alone the internet—means that nearly all important bouts were recorded and are readily available for analysts and amateur sleuths should they want to put in the time and research to further flesh out their hypothesis about who truly was the G.O.A.T.

When The Fight Site team was assembled it was done so with serious analysis in mind: no slap-dash half-baked op-ed pieces, no hyperbolic rants based on personal bias, a team who took what they did seriously and who would be willing to back up their opinions as if they were stepping into the cage themselves.

We all cared about putting together this list. Why? To give these fighters their due, to show the uninitiated why they are so darn great and to give a new perspective to those already aware.

In the second part of this series, ten of our contributors will offer up their own lists, with their reasonings for those lists. Following that, The Fight Site will release 20 articles all offering a unique take on the superb fighters who have made the consensus list.

Be sure to come back for violence, finesse, and some tales of greatness.