So, I'm going to be honest and admit that I'm a casual boxing fan. I only am attracted towards big name fights and in no way shape or form a boxing expert. I mean, I was watching a playoff baseball game at the same time, so I actually missed a fair bit of that fight, a couple knockdowns I missed, so it's not like I have any intention or desire to talk up this fight or boxing in general.
Yet, I know full of shit when I see one. I am seeing lots of people on this forum talking as if there was ever a MMA fight that was as good as that one, if not better. That is number 1 bullshit. There has no fight in MMA that was as great as that trilogy fight from last night.
When I evaluate how great fight was, I tend to look at two main things: Quality of the fighters involved and the quality of the fight itself. Now the quality of the fighters are easy to say, you just look at their body of work and abilities, but the definition of quality of the fight itself may vary depending on who you ask, but I look at the quality of the fight itself as the excitement of the fight itself, competitiveness of it, and perhaps the ending of it as well. Also, the hype of the fight itself, and whether it lived upto it perhaps can be taken into account in saying how great the fight was, and boy did it live up to the hype and some.
Fury-Wilder Trilogy had it all. It had likely the two best fighters of their generation, not just now and here, but the generation, at the peak of their powers, perhaps not as competitive as it could been, but with two knockdowns, Wilder made it as close and dramatic as he could and went out swinging, and it had great ending.
There has never been a fight in MMA that comes even close to this fight, and to say otherwise is a classic case of nuthugging at its finest. At heavyweight, you might say Crocop-Fedor. I consider Fedor the GOAT p4p, and Crocop the best striker ever, but I don't think two COMBINED were as good as fury and wilder, nor that fight was as good as this one. I mean, there might be a good competitive HW fight like Hunto-Bigfoot, but obviously they are not at the same level in terms of their talents.
I think that applies to other weight classes. To be at the same level as those two, it's tough to find to begin with. Perhaps at LHW, Jones-Cormier. But the fight itself wasn't half as good. Hendo-Shogun 1 was dynamic, but even though I believe healthy Shogun was as good as they came at LHW(PRIDE FOREVER IDGAF), they aren't at the level of these two fighters, and the fight itself also wasn't as good as the last night's fight.
At middleweight, I don't think there was a fight between the two who were even close being as good as these two. And I think the same thing can be said for other weight classes. GSP-Hendricks from WW, Edgar-Maynard 2 from LW, Aldo-Mendes 2 at FW, MM-Cejudo 2 from FLW perhaps hold talents that were comparable, but I don't think the combined talents were as good, nor the fight itself.
Truthfully, there hasn't been a single MMA fight that was half as good as Fury-Wilder 3. It's pretty delusional to suggest otherwise.