Jon Jones is the UFC heavyweight champion of the world. This comes after a three year layoff, an almost effortless first round finish in his first UFC heavyweight fight, and a virtually undefeated record (save a terrible foul call). The fight itself seemed almost ceremonial for Jones. He took his opponent Cyril Gane down, choked him out, and cut a promo for a giddy Joe Rogan in less than five minutes. Even Gane looked more matter of fact than depressed satting slumped against the cage.

Destructive.

Dominant.

Definite.

These are the words that define Jones’s fight, and career as a whole. Jones might as well be the light heavyweight champion as well - he lost his title to the three year lay off, not inside the octagon. His feats are so remarkable they warranted this response.

Out of context the tweet makes no sense. “The heavyweight king”? It’s odd to someone that doesn’t follow the sport. It’s confusing, but its not complicated.

Francis Ngannou, the reigning, defending, and undisputed heavyweight champion of the UFC is on a six fight winning streak. Over those six losses he has five stoppages, with three of them coming against former heavyweight title holders. He, like Jones, did not lose his belt in the octagon; Ngannou lost his belt because he allegedly asked for more money, health insurance, and the ability to wear his own sponsors. It’s as simple as that, and no amount of Dana White’s speculation on how scared he is, nor Jones claiming he’s a pussy can change that.

A simple asterisk * does not seem to sum up the footnotes necessary for that situation. Asterisk’s are common in Jones’s career. The two division title holder has tested positive for performance enhancing drugs, dropped out of fights, and even had events moved on his behalf so he could still compete in highly anticipated rematches against Alexander Gustafsson.

Can an asterisk accurately summarize the controversial context that says, “This competitor has likely cheated on more than one occasion”.

One round is less than three, so Jones is the GOAT. Bisping is better than Gane, so GSP is the GOAT.

Are either of these points valid? More or less.

Is it this simple? Never.

Are either of them definitively the GOAT? Are we able to more appropriately define criteria, or constrain our thoughts to ask a more concrete question?

Something is in the air. I’m not talking about aliens, spy balloons, or environmental disasters from chemical burns . Seasons are changing, names are fading, and greatness is being cemented across several sports, not just grappling.

A former greatest ever unceremoniously left combat sports this month. He received recognition and praise for being in his last fight, but “The Last Emperor ” ,Fedor Emelianenko, was stopped in his 48th fight, what he claims will be his last fight of a 23 year fighting career. His decade of dominance in Japan will be never be eclipsed in my head, but, to a new generation of fans, Fedor is just an old man that needs to retire. He’s becoming a fading story that gets stopped against relevant competition.

A potential new greatest ever just lost the fight of his life. Alexander Volkanovski went up in weight to challenge the UFC’s Lightweight Champion, Islam Makhachev, a wrecking machine in his own right. Volkanovski lost, but the skill he showed against his much larger opponent is earning him praise from the entire MMA world. Even in a losing effort many claim Volkanovski is the pound-for-pound best fighter in the sport. With wins over fellow featherweight greats Max Holloway and Jose Aldo, some are claiming he is on his way to being the best mixed martial artist ever.

My favorite non-combat sport is basketball. Until I was 15 it was all I ever wanted to do. With jiujitsu I don’t have time to play anymore, but I still follow the sport from a distance.

This season Lebron James became the NBA’s all time leading scorer. James accomplished this record in his 20th season. The previous record holder, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, set his record after 21 years in the NBA. That means James has taken a coveted title quicker than it was originally snatched. And while he is slowing down, James is still playing at All Star level.

If James is anything its consistent. There’s a joke that he’s Mr. 27-7-7. For you non-basketball fans that means you can count on James to score 27 points, pass to his teammates for another 7 scoring opportunities, and secure the ball 7 times after a missed shot. At the time of writing this, midway through his 20th season, James is averaging 29.8 points, 8.4 rebounds, and 7 assists thus far. Let’s peel away at the onion again for the basketball illiterate.

The average NBA career lasts about 5 years and in 2023 an average NBA player can expect to score about 9 points a game. James is literally quadrupling the career expectancy of an average NBA player while tripling the current scoring average. Absurd would be putting it mildly. That’s freakish, beyond hall of fame longevity and productivity.

Whenever discussions of basketball greatness come up, James’s name is inexorably tied to his airness. The man with two letters and one name; MJ, Michael, the basketball god Michael Jordan.

What else needs to be said about the man behind the most famous silhouette in the world? Jordan dominated one of the most hotly contested eras in basketball history, was the face of the greatest collection of basketball talent ever assembled, and starred in Space Jam. The guy can’t miss, he has NBA 6 championship appearances and 6 rings.

James has been to the finals 10 times and won 4 of those appearances. To scoff at that record would be contrarian to the point of insanity. Still, numbers are numbers; 6 > 4 and 100% > 40%. But can it really be so simple?

To translate an entire athletic career to a few numbers, let alone a single one, denies humanity. It takes the fun out of watching, learning, and doing the sport. In a number you don’t get Michael soaring to dunk with his tongue out, or closing his eyes shooting free throws. A single number ignores the context behind James’s 25 consecutive points in a single playoff game, or his exasperated declaration of relief, “It’s about damn time” when he won an NBA championship. Reducing people to one number ignores the whole athlete.

To that point, if we’re going purely on numbers, why not bring up Robert Horry? Big Shot Bob has 7 NBA titles to his name, more than Jordan and James.

Here is where any sane person would say, “Basketball is a team sport. You can’t possibly believe Horry, the role player, is on the same level as James and Jordan?

I’d expertly ignore my fallacious argument to say, “Well what do you think of Bill Russell? The man has more finals wins than Lebron and Jordan combined.”

You might bring up, “Bill Russell played in the 60’s against unspecialized athletes and often towered over the entire court opponents. That’s not a fair comparison - it’s hardly the same game. When Bill Russell retired there were only 14 NBA teams! We need to put an asterisk next to his titles.”

That’s kind of my point.

Asterisks are a tricky element in sports. Generally they’re used to provide context to wins and losses. They can be seen as a competitor’s scarlet letter. They create the context necessary for the simple stats.

The most famous astericizing in sports is probably Barry Bonds. The all time leader of home runs will forever be marred, wrongly, in my opinion, by his choice to use performance enhancing drugs. But if you go one layer deeper on his record you see he was a first ballot hall fame long before he become the face of steroid abuse in baseball.

Bonds has hit more home runs than any other baseball player. He also holds the honor of being the sole member of the 500/500 Club. That is, Bonds hit 500 home runs and stole 500 bases. You know what’s insane? Bonds is also the only member of the 400/400 Club, and he entered the 400/400 club 9 years before he retired. Effectively, Bonds had a hall of fame career before the personal trainer that allegedly supplied him with PEDs was indicted.

Does an asterisk say that?

I grew up in a Bay Area suburb. I was never really a baseball fan, but, I remember watching Bonds crush home runs for the San Francisco Giants. It was magnificent, awesome in the literal sense of the word in that it inspired great admiration. Bonds was a larger than life figure when I was a child and no asterisk can erase that persona from my memory.

Summing up an athlete’s entire life and career with a single number, or erasing one with an asterisk negates why we even enjoy sports in the first place, the performance. Titles and numbers are fine for selling points, but once you’re sold just enjoy the show. Obsessing over numbers prevents us from watching, enjoying, and learning from the performances that make humans into heroes. Over a long enough time horizon everyone loses and no one is without critic so why be one?

About a week ago I was contracted to judge Gordon Ryan - Felipe Pena 4. Writing that number still feels weird.

“Four? Hasn’t somebody won two of the three? Why would they do a fourth match?”

Pena has those two wins. One is by submission and the other is by points. The points were awarded because Pena successfully executed a back take to put him in a position to end the match like the first one did. The match ended shortly after Pena scored, but time can’t run out this time. The fourth match will have no time limit meaning someone has to be quit. These are wins that can’t be argued, allegedly. These are the matches Ryan favors because he generally does better in submission only matches compared to everyone else in the world. Except in his first match with Pena. The latter won by submission after nearly an hour of grappling.

The third? Pena lost in the most bizarre way imaginable. He quit, because of a submission, but he literally left the mat because he was done competing. He wanted to leave so he could catch a flight to Brazil and be with his friends and family to mourn the loss of his best friend that was murdered that same day at around 1 AM in Brazil.

A simple asterisk * does not seem to sum up the footnotes necessary for that. Still, Gordon claims it as a win, the record books do as well, and we are compelled to recognize it as such.

Gordon says this fourth fight will be the second in his soon to be three fight winning streak. A winning streak that would cement the rivalry with 3 wins for Gordon and 2 for Pena, thereby removing any detractor’s argument about Ryan being the best grappler ever. Allegedly.

Ryan was dominant in that match like he’s been for most of his career. He says he’s the greatest no gi competitor ever. His detractors say he only does no gi, that he favors the rulesets that benefit his game, and that his days are numbered. I say, who cares?

Bringing up Bill Russel is intentional as that is more or less how I see how Ryan; someone competing years ahead of their competition with that having an effect on their overall . Sure, you can say Russel benefitted from his size, athleticism, and the relative unprofessionalness of his competition; but he also won 10 NBA titles and the NBA Finals Most Valuable Player award is literally named after him. No one can’t take that away from him much like no one can ignore the impact Ryan and his team are having on the professionalization of no gi jiujitsu.

Consciously acknowledging the tone of this writing, I am trying to avoid preaching. If no one likes an arm chair quarterback I can’t imagine how they feel about a lecturing fan. Acknowledging that doesn’t help me though. I started writing this feeling annoyed and now I am confused. I’m not alone in my critique, but solidarity provides no answers, why don’t people like GOAT debates. I think it’s because GOAT’s don’t fight.

The beauty of combat sports is in the purity of competition. Two people agree to a few rules and then they run at each other until the other quits. It’s definitive, there is generally an acknowledging of the loser that the other was better. Compare that to team sports like my beloved basketball. Fouls end plays and the game devolves to fighting - at the end of the day, they care about it as much as us.

When we talk about match-ups like Jon Jones vs Francis Ngannou there is a chance that it will happen. We still might see two of the biggest baddest men in the world fight each other to see who is the best. When we talk about greats of bygone eras squaring off against men twice their age it gets silly.

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I’ll spare you the tired human chess analogies and summarize as follows

Arguing about an athlete’s qualifiers never ends. It’s a race to the bottom until you wake up one day and you’re arguing with Twitter trolls that have Russian MMA fighters as their avatar. Truly it is a waste of my time, and I invite you to realize it is a waste of yours as well.

Next month two more combat sports GOAT adjacent athletes will square off for a fourth time