With the Islam all-time debate, I built a data model designed to answer one question: who are the greatest MMA fighters ever from as objective a lens as possible?
The model is accomplishment-driven. Championships carry the most weight because, in most sports, greatness is ultimately anchored by winning at the highest level — the same basic logic behind why Tom Brady’s seven Super Bowl rings are central to his GOAT case.
It’s a weighted 100-point system:
40% Championship Resume — title wins
30% Dominance — elite winning streak, best 15-fight win %, championship control
20% Opponent Quality — strength of the fighters you beat
10% Finishing — finish rate against major-promotion and championship competition
Bonus points are reserved for rare résumé achievements, such as winning championships in multiple weight classes or leaving a major championship run undefeated.
Promotion strength is weighted too: UFC 1.00; PRIDE/WEC/Strikeforce .75; ONE/Bellator/PFL/RIZIN .50.
Opponent Quality uses a 50/50 hybrid: half based on what the opponent had accomplished when you fought them, half on what their career ultimately became.
The interesting part: 70 has emerged as a natural “Pantheon” cutoff, which lines up closely with Jed Meshew’s framing. The model is more useful for identifying historical tiers than obsessing over tiny decimal differences at the very top. Islam has now crossed that line. Volk is getting close.
Current Top 15
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Jon Jones — 97.68
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Georges St-Pierre — 85.48
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Anderson Silva — 82.34
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Demetrious Johnson — 76.54
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Islam Makhachev — 72.04
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Fedor Emelianenko — 70.75
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José Aldo — 70.71
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Daniel Cormier — 66.29
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Alexander Volkanovski — 64.75
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Kamaru Usman — 63.39
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Matt Hughes — 62.85
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Randy Couture — 61.25
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Max Holloway — 60.59
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Khabib Nurmagomedov — 60.74
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Israel Adesanya — 60.20
I have the full Top 50 plus the category-by-category breakdown if you want it.
