In a weeklong series, The Athletic’s MMA team is rolling out results from our recently completed 2020 MMA fan survey. A big thank you to all of the subscribers who took part in the survey.
GOAT debates are nebulous across all sports, but because of MMA’s relative youth compared to other major pastimes like basketball and football, ours, in particular, is a unique case. Without an overpowering figure like Michael Jordan or Wayne Gretzky to slot at the top, MMA’s GOAT discussion has always been one of those weird questions that lacks a true correct answer, but is still flush with incorrect possibilities.
For instance, take a UFC Hall of Famer like Matt Hughes. An accomplished champion, sure. A respected legacy, yes. But a GOAT candidate? Definitely not. Or, how about Royce Gracie? One of the sport’s most influential fighters. A trailblazer, no doubt. But unfortunately not GOAT material.
Still, an exclusive club has emerged over the years of about seven or so fighters, each of whom could credibly lay claim to the title of MMA’s greatest of all-time. So really, it all comes down to one question: What do you value most? The resume of Jon Jones or the squeaky-clean greatness of Georges St-Pierre? The records of Demetrious Johnson or the overwhelming dominance of Amanda Nunes? The criteria are different for every fight fan — and nowhere was that more apparent than the results of The Athletic’s recent fan survey, which stirred up this very debate.
In the end, two major names lapped the competition: St-Pierre (45.1 percent) and Jones (29.4 percent).
For Matthew Brennan, a 40-year-old reader of The Athletic from Massachusetts, the answer was clear-cut.
"Any argument you have for the other people on your list of the greatest of all-time, GSP has pretty much done it one better than every single one of them," he said.
"And then, icing on the cake, he went up and won that second belt off (Michael) Bisping at the end."
For several responders, including Brennan, St-Pierre's consistency over the years and chameleon-like adaptability were what pushed the Canadian legend to the top spot. GSP's career-defining run — a 10-year, 13-fight unbeaten streak — saw him constantly matched against different stylistic challenges, all of which he inevitably overcame.
That ability to "adapt his style each time a new problem was presented" ended up being the same factor that nudged Ben Westcott, a 33-year-old Virginia resident, onto St-Pierre's side.
"Jon Jones, he's had kind of two phases of his career," Westcott said. "It seems like there was the amazing kinetic and creative striker at the beginning who had the crazy throws, and then he evolved into the more defensive style that we're seeing now. And his level of ability in those two phases was far enough above everyone else that they weren't able to catch up, but now we're seeing people catch up. He doesn't seem to be adapting his style to these new puzzles."
St-Pierre's squeaky-clean image both inside and outside of the cage was another factor that weighed heavily on the decision for our voters, especially considering the law-skirting, PED-popping chaos he was up against in Jones. For 30-year-old Canadian Cole Nowicki, St-Pierre's recent reluctance to accept the title of GOAT in the first place also helped his case.
"GSP doesn't believe a GOAT exists, which I think on top of his record cements him in that position," Nowicki said. "Mostly due to my blatant misreading of the old maxim that a reluctant leader makes the best leader. He is MMA's humble, handsome king. Our Jon Snow, per se."
The case for Jones
While the arguments for St-Pierre were wide-ranging, the arguments The Athletic's readers made in support of Jones were noticeably more blunt.
"I mean, he's undeniable," said Lucas Waggoner, a 29-year-old from Missouri. "That's just the first thing that comes to mind."
Jones was famously the youngest UFC champion in history when he captured the light heavyweight belt in 2011 at age 23. And his early title run — a destructive path he carved through legends such as Mauricio Rua, Quinton Jackson, Lyoto Machida, Rashad Evans and Vitor Belfort — was the catalyst for many who selected him as MMA's top dog. That, and his knack for beating opponents in their own areas of expertise.
"Just the way he's mowed through some of the other guys coming through, and just the way he's able to beat you at your own game as well," Waggoner said. "Like out-wrestling Daniel Cormier and getting into striking fests with some other guys. He's just so well-rounded. He's so good at everything.
"And then obviously all the title defenses that he'd had, as well. I know that he surpassed George St-Pierre."
"His strength of schedule for his run to the belt, and then his first (few title defenses), he was just knocking off legends there for a while who weren't necessarily washed up yet," agreed 25-year-old Louisiana resident Gavan Alquist. "They were still very much contenders, and the light heavyweight division, at that time, was still very much one of the stronger divisions in the UFC.
"Granted, now we've had a few fights in the past few years where Jon's starting to look a little human, with the Dominick Reyes fight most recently. But the fact is that he's not necessarily out of his prime, but he's probably already hit that top of the mountain so he's on the way down, and he's still beating up guys that are just arriving at the top of that mountain."
Alquist also cited Jones' uncanny ability to rise to the occasion in the championship rounds, which won him close battles against Alexander Gustafsson and most recently Reyes.
Those intangibles — along with Jones' style points in his victories — made a difference to our voters.
"Not to oversimplify GSP's style, but you know, Jon wasn't just laying on people and kind of holding them against their will," Alquist said, "which is still very impressive in its own right. But one, (what Jones did) was more entertaining. And two, it's just a little bit more impressive to be able to come on at the end of the fight and kind of turn it up as if it was going to be a 10-round fight."

The case against St-Pierre
The case against St-Pierre as the GOAT is simple — and it's one that was brought up often by The Athletic readers.
"Two losses, right?" 34-year-old New Yorker Christoper Fanning said.
"Then the questionable third loss (to Johny Hendricks). … (Jones) has never gotten caught, he's never really gotten hit that hard. And if you watch that (Matt) Serra fight with GSP, you just look back, and he kind of got fucked up pretty quickly. So it's hard. Like, if I'm going to say the best person ever to do it — right? — I've got to go with the guy who's statistically the best person ever.
"I think Khabib (Nurmagomedov) is probably closer in the conversation than GSP is at this point."
The case against Jones
Just as the case against St-Pierre was straightforward for most Jones supporters, the case against Jones was even more of a layup.
"To me, the PEDs stuff really takes him out of the conversation," Brennan said.
For many readers who participated in the survey, Jones' ample history of outside-of-the-cage incidents — such as his PED past or a tendency of popping up on the wrong side of the law, like the baffling DWI he earned last month in the middle of a global quarantine — was simply too big of a hurdle to overcome.
"Jones' behavior makes it really hard to just give him this benefit of the doubt that people want to give him," Brennan said. "Where he says, 'You know, I was in my dick pills or I'm pulsing,' all these sorts of things. That's when the other behavior of him never taking accountability for doing all these really terrible things does make a difference when you talk about the GOAT discussion … because he gets caught doing terrible stuff and never really owns any of it. It's always like, 'I have to overcome it.' He never really just says, like, 'I was drunk driving, and I ran into a pregnant lady. I'm sorry about that.'
"He's a great fighter, but I feel like I've been burned too many times on that guy."
The issue of Jones' recent lackluster performances also was a common refrain.
"If we're saying that GSP, his second to last fight, he might have lost that?" Nowicki said. "I feel Jones lost his last two fights."
Anderson Silva: 6.6 percent
"The Spider" narrowly snagged The Athletic's third-place spot on our survey, and he was the pick for several longtime fans of the sport.
The original GOAT, Silva's 16-fight UFC winning streak and Hollywood-esque in-cage antics were the stuff of legend. So even if his legacy has taken a hit in recent years between late-career losses and two failed drug tests, there are still those who hold the former UFC middleweight champion in high regard.
"Silva's run was just so spectacular, especially the way that he embarrassed guys like Forrest Griffin, like Stephen Bonnar, like (James Irvin)," said Justin Pitts, a 37-year-old New York resident.
"Like, he was fighting up (a division) and just tooling guys. That's why I thought he was the best. A lot of GSP fights were decisions, but Silva came through. Throughout this all, he's fighting up and he was finishing guys. Sure, he had a boring fight here and there, like the Demian Maia fight, which was just kind of bizarre. But I think that's why (he's the GOAT), is because he was finishing guys."
Demetrious Johnson: 6.2 percent
"Mighty Mouse" just missed out on third place, but his may be the most unique case of the group. Johnson not only avoided any outside-of-the-cage snafus throughout his UFC career, he also broke Silva's record for consecutive title defenses — a record he still holds.
Blazingly fast and well-rounded, with a skill set that was able to beat opponents in so many ways, Johnson was rarely challenged over the first seven years of the flyweight division's inception.
"He was basically peerless," said 38-year-old Ohio resident John Lintz. "Nobody gave him any type of a real fight. Jon Jones had had fights that you could argue could've gone either way. GSP, I think, got beat by 'Bigg Rigg' years ago. But with 'Mighty Mouse,' I don't think there was any fight that was close until he fought (Henry) Cejudo — and you could argue that when he lost to Cejudo. ... So I think that he was just so much more dominant than those other guys."
The biggest hole that responders poked into Johnson's case was his strength of schedule. Lintz concedes that's a "super valid point," but as an alumnus from a university that shares a similar fate, he ultimately won't fault Johnson for something that was outside of his control.
"You can only beat who got put in front of you," Lintz said. "Like, I'm a University of Dayton Flyers fan. I went to the University of Dayton for my law degree. Their basketball team went basically undefeated for the year, and there's this criticism against them that they weren't really great because they didn't play anybody. And I guess the answer to that then is: They beat who was put in front of them, and they can't help that they're not in the Big 10 or the ACC. They whopped up on everybody in the Atlantic 10. And so that's just what you've got."
(Top photo: Brandon Magnus / Zuffa)
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