How do you rate Usman's reign as champion?

[Lee_]

I think Usman has a good argument to be #2 personally. Hughes has some pretty soft title defenses and benefited from 170 being the lightest available option. Could go either way IMO.

Hughes is #2 only for his length of dominance; he did not fight the kind of competition that exists at WW for Usman, or what was around for GSP. WW was fairly weak at that time.

I don't see Hughes doing well against well rounded fighters with similar wrestling ability and much better striking; there weren't any of those around at WW when Hughes was champ.

 

[Lee_]

I don’t think we can properly rate Leon until he fights the top guys of his era. It’s not entirely his fault, but Luque, RDA and Nelson are his best wins leading up to Usman.

And the details of the Usman win matter. He was losing (it was never going to be 3-2, it was 4-1 or a Hail Mary KO). He was showing no spark. Usman took his foot off the gas. Leon landed an amazing kick. Without the kick no one is even going to make the case that he’s top ten all time. Jumping to #2 seems crazy to me but it’s an interesting conversation.

We will see for sure when Leon starts fighting again, especially with an Usman rematch. There seems to be a wide range of speculation in terms of what his win against Usman means.

You see some fighters lose the title righteously, where in other cases, it was more of a low probability event that challengers weren't able to replicate (GSP/Serra, Amanda/Pena). Not to diminish Leon, but I think 7-8 times out of 10, Usman beats him, and this was part of the 20-30% chance coming true. I see Usman outpointing him in a rematch and being more careful at the end of the fight, just my 2 cents.

 

[Barge]

Had the same problem as Cain. Not enough variety in Opponents.

 

[cburm]

He's right under gsp 2nd he can still take the number 1 if he doesn't lose again and gets 4 more defences

 

[Pequeño Corey]

Not sure if I agree that the Tyron win didn’t age well, but the Masvidal KO has certainly aged like a fine wine.

 

[Jorge Luis Borges]

I don’t think we can properly rate Leon until he fights the top guys of his era. It’s not entirely his fault, but Luque, RDA and Nelson are his best wins leading up to Usman.

And the details of the Usman win matter. He was losing (it was never going to be 3-2, it was 4-1 or a Hail Mary KO). He was showing no spark. Usman took his foot off the gas. Leon landed an amazing kick. Without the kick no one is even going to make the case that he’s top ten all time. Jumping to #2 seems crazy to me but it’s an interesting conversation.

1. Not sure if I said Edwards was 2 or 3 all time at WW, but I meant Usman. I put Usman just under Hughes, but in striking range. I agree with you that it's currently hard to know where to put Edwards all time as a champ. Let's let the guy defend first.

2. As far as Usman-Edwards goes, I maintain that Usman was not dominating the fight until a last minute Hail Mary. I think it's not a good way to understand what happened.

All three judges gave Edwards the 1st round. Edwards was easily winning the 5th. This fight was at best a 48-47 for Usman if it went to the cards, and given the magnitude of the kick, a 47-47 was by no means out of the question. Don;t get me wrong. Usman was fighting well and winning on points. But when people talk about dominating, I think we need to mean something more than cruising to a 48-47. Had Usman really punished Edwards and pushed him to his breaking point, we'd have seen him slow down a lot in the fifth. But when you watch how patiently Edwards set up the kill shot, you can see he still had his wind and was relaxed. Not characteristics of a dominated fighter.

 

[AbominableJoman]

He was an ok lw champ I suppose.

 

[VinceArch]

He was an ok lw champ I suppose.

LW? You must mean WW.

 

[Ozze]

His options for title defenses surely hurt him in future discussions about the best champs.

Would give him a 7/10.

 

[welcometohavoc]

I’ll be honest. I was fully sold on Usman. Thought he’d keep the belt until he had done enough to surpass GSP. I wasn’t too impressed with Masvidal getting two shots against him however as those were tailor made wins. His other title fights were against solid contenders though.
Now what the hell does he do? Does he have enough left in the tank to get the belt back? I don’t know.

We need to remember that Usman was cruising to a pretty solid UD before the head kick. A trilogy fight not only makes sense, it likely favors Usman

 

[Jesus H. Sherdog]

He had the division cleaned out for a good 2/3 years. It only just has reset itself with new contenders
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Yeah let’s show it like that instead of him ducking Leon and fighting Mas and Colby 2x each. Him fighting Leon when Leon was 10-2 just starting out isn’t cleaning out the division 5 years later lol.

Lmao at Tyron, Maia, and RDA being ranked there. Some incredibly cherry picked two week time period.

 

[BFoe]

Whether you think Colby deserved it or not, that’s a really big challenge. It’s not Usman’s fault that they didn’t make Colby beat up Jorge and someone else first. And while Jorge 100% did not deserve that rematch, Usman’s performance was spectacular. Woodley is also very dangerous and no one had solved that puzzle. Burns is no throw-in either, he’s awesome. And while the Leon fight ended in disaster, Usman proved once again to be a step ahead of the division until he got caught slipping. In my opinion it is a very strong body of work.

It’s not.
How do we know Colby is a really big challenge? Colby has never beaten an elite WW in their prime, ever. Personally, I think he’s overrated. And I’m not saying it’s Usman’s fault that Colby didn’t have to beat good contenders—but I also can’t rate those wins all that highly because of it. Usman has 5 defenses, but against only 3 unique opponents. Colby arguably didn’t deserve the first TS, and most definitely didn’t deserve the 2nd one. Masvidal didn’t deserve either one. Burns is a good win.

Don’t get me wrong, it probably still edges out Hughes’ reigns. Hughes’ 5 defense reign did have Mach Sakurai, Sherk, and Trigg though. Gil Castillo hurts that reign, and even Newton although he was the previous titleholder. So I’d give Usman #2 WW reign all time, it’s just a huge gulf between him and GSP.

 

[rjmbrd]

If you’re going to accuse him of not providing the full context then don’t do the same thing. “Usman got knocked out” is far from the full story from that fight. But like he said, we’ll learn more from the rematch, assuming it happens.

There is no context necessary - it is plain common sense you have not "cleaned out the division" prior to fighting the #1 contender on a 9 fight win streak. The fact that you fought SEVEN YEARS prior, before either of you were ranked and Edwards was 2-1 nobody, doesn't mean anything. This should not need to be typed out.

Context in the Edwards title fight is when both guys were fresh, Leon took him down, mounted and dominated the first round. He then lost marginal 10-9 rounds in the middle, and came back to win by KO.

Even if Usman somehow survived the kill shot, it would likely have been a 10-8 and ended in a draw. Absolute WORST case for Edwards would be dropping a 3-2 decision where he dominated two rounds and marginally lost 3.

FFS I said Usman is top 5 all time and one of the greatest to ever do it.

You don't need to down play Edwards to feel better about Usman getting wrecked. Welcome to MMA.

 

[Dorkman]

A Pretty strong run. Either comparable too, but probably just below Hughes by a smidge for overall Title run legacy where Hughes had 2 title runs, and 7 defenses total to Usmans 1 title reign, and 5 defenses total to date. But obviously he still has a chance to add too that if he can get his hand issues sorted out which seemed to have been plaguing him fairly consistency the last year or two.

 

[Viking Power]

We need to remember that Usman was cruising to a pretty solid UD before the head kick. A trilogy fight not only makes sense, it likely favors Usman

Agreed and good to call that out as something to keep in mind. Between age and getting KOed I wonder where his head is at though? If he gets an immediate rematch (I’m not sure what the latest news is on that), will he be the same fighter and have that confidence he had coming into their 2nd match? I’m purely what iffing it right now.

 

[ferrisjso]

Agree. Leon did deserve a title shot based on the number of consecutive wins but he hadn’t done anything to make anyone think he was the guy. If odds were released for every potential Usman fight at that time, Leon probably would have had the 5th or 6th best odds.

Exactly.

 

[jooohnmatrix]

Average at best, generally bland and boring, he somehow managed to get in at the right time when the best were coming to the end of their careers. Glad he’s been exposed. He should probably just retire after his last defeat as he was never really that good.

 

[HP_Nut]

Easily 1 of the greatest WW reigns (I would say 2nd to GSP, I have Usman over Hughes) ever but I thought it was premature that some were adamant that he had already surpassed GSP, on the idea of "the new breed is so evolved that these wins count for much more". Yes, overall talent level is higher than ever but a guy like Colby who does not have great striking was for a long time considered #2 (& still by many), so the idea that these guys are so much more advanced is a stretch. On avg, yes, they are better than ever but not to that degree

 

[Leon Edwards]

He is better than Hughes a d would beat GSP

 

[NoBiasJustMMA]

Third best WW all time IMO behind GSP and Hughes.