I know you're a Conor fan and all and the guy has done great stuff, but no... they aren't the two top fighters. You and I clearly have different metrics.
Yes we do. There's judging fighters' records, which you're doing. And then there's using those records to gauge fighters' skills, which I'm doing. Your metric is superior for sports where there are regular schedules, e.g. football league tables, which are a good thing. Sometimes I think a lower placed team is better than a higher placed team, but ultimately still think that the final league table at the end of the season is the better thing to go by. But MMA isn't and can't be like regular sports. Fighters fight infrequently and irregularly for health reasons, which is the way it has to be. Yet people, like yourself, try to create some sort of structure by which title fights should be awarded. You're fighting a losing battle. Rankings and records can only be useful for giving a general indicator of who the top fighters are. They won't ever be as effective for judging who the best fighter is as regular sports' league tables. Thus we just have to cut through the bullshit and gauge who the best fighter is for ourselves. Records help in doing that. And despite the fact that Conor hasn't fought much, or recently, at lightweight, I still think he's the most skilled. I'd pick him to beat Dustin, Justin, Tony, Chandler, etc. And that's what we should be going by. Maybe your opinion differs on who Conor would and wouldn't beat, and that's fine, and is what discussion is for.
Mine is that you can't keep a rank for ages based on favoritism, no matter how good you looked once upon a time.
Favouritism is another metric entirely, and not one that I use. You bring up a good point, in that the UFC uses neither of our metrics; you use records, and I use skills, while the UFC uses BUSINESS. And until there's some sort of governing body that matchmakes on behalf of the UFC, we can't do much to change that. All we can talk about is which of our metrics is superior. Then within those metrics, which fighter is superior.
Conor might be favored against all of them... but it'd be a crap-shoot because it is based on fantasy versions of Conor, not a Conor that has actually been seen in the cage at LW. The last time we saw a LW Conor win was 2016. You might not think it'd cheapen a belt to have a guy like that get HIS THIRD LW TITLE SHOT IN A ROW... but a segment of fans definitely would. The belt's legitimacy would be lessened. If Conor won twice in my 4-man tournament idea... then that idea would evaporate. Everyone would see the belt as legit and the future hype/PPV numbers would be bumped to correspond to that.
Here's another issue with your metric; you're making up "rules" to follow. You say "fantasy version of Conor". But every current version of any fighter is a "fantasy version". No fighter stays the same. The more that time passes, the less relevant the version we previously saw is. E.g. the Khabib we saw smash Gaethje is very relevant to what we know of what Khabib could do today. The Conor we saw smash Eddie is much less relevant to what we know of what Conor could do today. And that's all fine, and I take that into consideration in my metric when I determine that Conor is the best. But how have you declared that we can only go by a "fantasy version" of Conor, while we have the "real version" of Khabib? What's your cutoff point? Is it arbitrary?
Finally, I know you haven't seen the evidence. Nor have the vast majority of posters. That's specifically why I brought it up on the first page. But whatever, you can think I'm a conspiracy theorist, it is fine. It isn't my goal to convince you nor do I particularly want to delve into details of his 36k posts to try and prove it to you since I'm sure you don't particularly care. I know what corporate posters are supposed to do and he does it overkill... 36k posts about nothing but PR topics. Pretty obvious, but only if you pay attention to that sort of thing. Which obviously you (and most others) don't. Guess all I can do is bump this when they announce it'll be for the title.
Whether kenflo is a "UFC shill" or not, your should be focusing on the arguments, not the arguer. If he's right then he's right. If he's wrong then he's wrong. Discuss the point to determine what the case is. I don't pay attention to the arguer.