From MMAFighting.com Enjoy!
http://www.mmafighting.com/articles/...a_fighter.html
Recently, HDNet’s Inside MMA started profiling their All Time Top 10 MMA Fighters as given to them by MMAJunkie.com via internet vote. This past week, Matt Hughes was named number five on their list. To be honest, some members of the panel on this recent episode of the show didn’t seem to agree with Hughes reaching those heights (Eddie Bravo and Phil Baroni). Phil Baroni, a very tough MMA fighter that hits like a truck and doesn’t tap even when he’s caught dead to rights in a rear naked choke, certainly deserves to be heard; his opinion is as good as any. The same can be said for Eddie Bravo, a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu wizard and awesome trainer.
After all, it’s not like these guys are the only ones with the same thoughts on the former Miletich fighter. That said, it appears that Baroni doesn’t even think Matt Hughes belongs in the top 10. Eddie Bravo said, “I would say he’s definitely top twenty five of all time.”
On the flip side, there are some people in this world that believe if Matt Hughes isn’t on your top 10 MMA fighters of all time list then you haven’t really been watching the sport.
This is why people have opinions. After all, a strong argument can be made that Matt Hughes not only belongs in the company of the top five MMA fighters of all time, he quite possibly deserves to be higher on the list. So how could people have such differing opinions?
Perhaps it boils down to what you believe a top 10 MMA fighter is. When Baroni began to disagree with Hughes being on the list, he said, “I don’t know about top five all around fighters.”
Actually, it’s a list of the top 10 fighters of all time, not necessarily a top 10 all around fighters list. Therein lies the difference, perhaps. Some believe, as Baroni does, that when choosing a top 10 MMA fighters of all time list, the people on the list have to be extremely well rounded or above average at everything. In fact, later Baroni indicated that Hughes “never developed any stand up skills,” and “never really seemed to have much of a submission game.”
Well roundedness certainly helps in the sport of MMA, no doubt. To a certain extent it’s a must if you want to win. One simply can’t compete in this sport if they haven’t trained in everything. The assertion that striking was never a strength of Hughes’s is probably a founded one, even if he certainly trained in and was knowledgeable about every aspect of fighting.
Said another way, several of the fighters that Hughes defeated on his way to a 42-6 overall MMA record with 14 (T)KO’s and 19 submissions would’ve beaten him in a kickboxing match.
But MMA isn’t a kickboxing match. So does something like that mean that Hughes doesn’t belong on a top 10 MMA fighters list? Not necessarily; in fact, it would seem to depend on your definition of what a top 10 MMA fighter is. Let’s use football to illustrate a point.
For years there was this ongoing discussion about who was the best running back in the NFL between Barry Sanders and Emmit Smith. Smith was the more well rounded guy in that he blocked better and caught more passes in addition to being a heckuva runner, so if you go by the more well rounded argument he wins hands down. But anyone that ever saw Barry Sanders run the ball knows that no one in recent times—no one—was a better pure runner. And that by itself, at least in this writer’s mind, put Barry Sanders ahead of Emmit Smith as an NFL running back. Sanders was so good at what he did well that it simply dwarfed everything else.
Well, Matt Hughes was the best the welterweight division had ever seen until very recently at doing two things: Taking people down and grounding them down into bits. Beyond that, he has black belt jiu- jitsu passes as Eddie Bravo pointed out, and submitted a ton of people during his career from the top position.
In other words, up until today’s Georges St. Pierre— a man that has the potential to be called one of the greatest ever someday—Matt Hughes was better at imposing his will and strengths upon opponents as anyone else was. No, we don’t know much about his guard, as he very rarely ended up on his back. His striking skills weren’t upper echelon.
But did it matter? This is a man that has posted a 42-6 MMA record. Furthering this point, Chuck Liddell never demonstrated much in the line of jiu- jitsu; thus, if you go by the ‘only very well rounded fighters make this list argument’ perhaps he doesn’t deserve to be on anyone’s top 10 MMA fighters of all time list either.
But Chuck Liddell, like Matt Hughes, was so great at what he did/ does that it made up for any perceived weaknesses. The Iceman is about takedown defense and knocking people out.
And Matt Hughes is about taking people down and hurting/ submitting them there. It’s that simple.
The proof is in the pudding by the way, and can be seen through his record. From March 17, 2001 up to his first fight against B.J. Penn on January 31, 2004, Hughes won 13 straight matches (11 by stoppage). Think about some of the people he beat during that span—Hayato Sakurai (TKO), Frank Trigg (submission), Sean Sherk (decision), and Carlos Newtown (twice by knockout). Yes, then he later lost to B.J. Penn by rear naked choke in the initial round. However, right after that he rattled off six more wins in a row over an unbelievable cast in Renato Verissimo (decision), Georges St. Pierre (submission), Frank Trigg (submission), Joe Riggs (submission), Royce Gracie (TKO), and B.J. Penn (TKO).
Sure, Hughes lost to St. Pierre twice after that, defeating Chris Lytle in the middle. By the same token, St. Pierre may well be on his way to being considered a top all time MMA fighter himself. On top of it all, Hughes fought in the 170 pound division, one that the former PRIDE organization had no replica of. In other words, most of the best in this weight class fought in the UFC, so an argument can be made that he had to fight against a tougher set of opponents during his career as his weight class lost no one to PRIDE.
The bottom line is this: Matt Hughes was better at what he did than anybody else in the welterweight division for a long time. He regularly implemented his game plan on you no matter what you tried to do. His strengths were better than yours, so you were unable to exploit any perceived weaknesses. What’s more, his perceived relative weaknesses were clearly strong enough to survive with.
And that’s why he’s deserves to be considered a top five MMA fighter of all time, in this writer’s opinion. In the end, this may be about your definition of what the term ‘top 10 MMA fighter’ really means.
Everyone has an opinion. Why not add another?
