Did he though? 1-3 per year against quality plus a few cans?
So some years he fought 4-5 times with 3 being top quality?
2000 he had his first 5 fights. 2001 he had 5 fights.
2002 he had 3 and 2003 he had 5. 2004 he had 4.
During his first 5 years he fought 22 fights but that was the tournament era and most were cans. Big Nog x3, Randleman, Coleman & Arona that's 4 top level opponents. Babalu and Gary Goodridge aren't top opponents.
2005- 3 fights with 2 cans and one top level in Cro Cop
2006- 2 fights Coleman and Mark Hunt (is that 2 top level or was Hunt a can/ just a kickboxer)
2007- 2 fights MW Linland and Freakshow HMC
2008- 1 fight with Big Timmy
2009- Arlovski and Brett Rogers (is that 1 top 1 can)
10 fights and 5 years of is 10 year unbeaten streak did not include more then 1 fight with a "Top Level" HW per year. He is still pretty GOATy as a HW but Stipe with a 20-4 record has far more high level wins and lost only 4 times and has wins over all but the Struve loss. He would likely have avenged that one as well had Struve ever gotten near the level Stipe rose to after that fight.
IMO Stipe > Fedor at HW.
How is Babalu, who has wins over Shogun and Chael and later became Strikeforce LHW champ, not a top level opponent?
2002—
Schilt and
Herring
2003–
Nog as well as
Fujita, who was still in MMA News’ top 10 and had been in everyone’s top 10 just before that. (Plus Goodridge, who was middling and on a decent win streak at the time). Fought Valavicius and Nagata in the can category.
2004–
Coleman,
Randleman, and
Nog, all 3 of which were ranked. Fought Ogawa who really shouldn’t be called a can (although obviously not elite, and he did so the same night he also fought Nog in their 2nd fight. That’s an insane year actually.
2005-
- Mirko (plus TK and Zulu)
2006–
Coleman and
Hunt
2007 —Lindland and Choi (Not the greatest year for various reasons, but I’m on the fence as to how to classify Lindland. Not a top HW win obviously, but even though he was MW, Lindland was an absolute beast who was #1 MW in the world. He’s a great fighter).
2008–
Sylvia
2009–
Arlovski and Rogers
That’s 12 very good opponents in that 7 year span, plus Babalu and Arona. You’d probably have to skip counting Stipe’s first two years in which he fought no really good opponents, to even get him to Fedor’s number. And then of course, Stipe took 3 losses in that time period as well, while Fedor took 0.
Fedor has more ranked wins; he has 5 total title defenses (PRIDE and WAMMA combined) in one continuous run—something Stipe didn’t achieve in two title reigns.
I respect your opinion, but I don’t see how Stipe can be ranked ahead of Fedor. There’s no real metric where he is ahead.