The Doggy Bag: Readers Write, We Respond

Who’s the man?

I try not to get involved in the Anderson Silva vs. Fedor Emelianenko pound-for-pound status, but where do you get off ranking Georges St. Pierre above Fedor? You can say that in the past few years Fedor maybe hasn't the amount of tough competition that GSP has, but c'mon, less than a year ago GSP lost to Serra. Who is not top competition.

The ability not to drop the occasional fight should be very high on how you rank pound- for-pounders, and I just cannot see anyone in the top 2 other than Silva and Fedor.
-- Stuart Peace

Jordan Breen, radio host and columnist: The operative determiners in pound-for-pound status are the accumulation of quality wins, with consideration for wins across multiple weight classes. While being undefeated (or near-undefeated in Emelianenko's case) is certainly commendable, being undefeated is only as significant as the opposition against which you do it.

In a time-span in which Emelianenko is 7-0 with victories against Mirko "Cro Cop" Filipovic, Mark Hunt and Tim Sylvia. St. Pierre is 8-1 win wins over Frank Trigg, Matt Hughes twice, Sean Sherk, B.J. Penn, Josh Koscheck and Jon Fitch. The amount of quality fighters is of a pronounced difference. On top of that, the quality in this case is much deeper on St. Pierre's side. Welterweight is arguably MMA's deepest and most talent-laden weight class, and as a result, the fighters who become elite in the division have amassed a much greater body of work for themselves.

For instance, Fitch was universally considered the second-ranked welterweight fighter in the world when he met St. Pierre, and needed to beat strings of top-notch fighters to achieve that status. Therefore, St. Pierre isn't just beating a greater amount of his best divisional contemporaries, but beating fighters who have defeated a greater body of top fighters themselves. To greater illustrate my point, if we did a pound-for-pound top 100, the number of welterweights on the list would likely considerably surpass the amount of heavyweights. And with good reason, as the greater depth in that division allows more high-quality welterweight fights, introducing a more profound stratification and the emergence of more accomplished fighters.

Certainly, we need to take the Serra fight into consideration. If not for the Serra loss, I would be inclined to rank St. Pierre over even Anderson Silva, given how truly quality St. Pierre's track record has been. However, even with the loss to Serra, its subsequent avenging and the rest of the résumé that goes with it is more outstanding than Emelianenko's, whom despite not losing, has taken on top competition neither as outstanding or frequently as St. Pierre, which to some extent is just an unfortunate part of being a heavyweight in MMA.

---

History altering fight

I just wanted to point out that the purposed match between Royce Gracie and Mark Kerr would have been a terrible fight looking back at what we know now. Mark Kerr was a chemically altered human who was using steroids at unreal levels. I know Royce was also tagged later in his career but there is little doubt that back then he wasn’t.

Now if Royce would have won it, he would have made a huge statement, but if he was pounded away how could anyone say Kerr was better? I am one of those [fans] that back then really wanted to see that fight happen and checked the internet fifty times a day to see if there were any updates on the bout happening.
--Dominic Massaro

Tim Leidecker, international reporter: You raise some interesting points, Dominic. The first of course the steroid issue, but I don’t want to touch that as it would certainly go beyond the scope of this mailbag. If you’re looking to further read about steroid abuse in mixed martial arts, you will find more than 150 entries in the Sherdog.com archives within the past five years.

The bout between Gracie and Kerr is indeed tricky business. While we all agree that it certainly would not have been a very exciting fight for the spectators as both men have never been known for their great striking -- or as my valued colleague Jordan Breen put it -- “Kerr would have laid on Royce to win a boring decision as he was 500 times his size and could grapple,” so you just cannot rationalize away the magnitude of this bout.

Just imagine the following scenario: Had Kerr beaten Gracie and maybe gone on to defeat Peter Aerts and Andy Hug as well, freestyle wrestling would have prevailed over all other relevant fighting styles as the best base for MMA, and today’s fight sport landscape would probably look much different from what it does now.

There is even the possibility that we wouldn’t have this debate here, as there would have been definite proof of which fighting style works best, and establishing that was the objective of the events in the 1990’s back when MMA was still called NHB (no holds barred).

Had Royce won on the other hand, I don’t think too much would have changed compared to today. Kerr would have been clocked up as another American wrestler with little understanding of the ground game in line with Ken Shamrock, Kimo Leopoldo and Dan Severn. The lone difference I can imagine, is there would probably be a couple dozen more Brazilian jiu-jitsu schools in Japan as the fight was supposed to take place either at the Tokyo Dome or Yokohama Arena with tens of thousands of Japanese fans watching in awe.