A few days ago Luke Thomas of SBNation.com/MMA hit up his twitter account with “I will never understand the crowd that ranks Jose Aldo top 5 p4p. He’s defeated Brown, Gamburyan and Faber. WTF? 145 = 1 of MMA’s wkst divs.” The tweet kicked off a minor debate over Aldo’s placement in the pound-for-pound rankings. The focus of the back-and-forth was between those who feel that Aldo’s talent and destruction of men like Mike Brown, Urijah Faber and Manny Gamburyan showed such a high skill level that it overcame the “badness” of 145 pounds and those who feel he needs more big wins and the division needs to get better overall.
Debating pound-for-pound rankings in mixed martial arts always gets a little messy. It’s a completely subjective activity and everyone seems to focus on different criteria. Times like these provide a good opportunity for a refresher on the intention of the entire concept of pound-for-pound is. For that I’ll turn to an article on the history of P4P rankings on HBO.com:
Most associate the origin of the “pound-for-pound” title with Sugar Ray Robinson in the 1940s and indeed, to this day most recognize Robinson as the best fighter ever to tie on a pair of gloves. The lore is that the newspaper guys needed a way to distinguish Robinson as the best fighter of the day as Joe Louis, a giant even then, was clearly the sport’s emperor. Yes, Louis was the heavyweight champion, a national icon and beloved figure, the king of sport. But pound for pound, Robinson was better.
Some historians trace the concept of a pound-for-pound best back farther, to the teens and ’20s, when the great lightweight champion Benny Leonard was one of the kings of the game, even as Jack Dempsey was making his legend at heavyweight.
The greatest heavyweights are never recognized as the best in the game, pound-for-pound. There are two reasons: first, the very designation is a means to separate heavyweight champions, typically the most popular and most watched fighters in the game, from the smaller, harder-working, under-rewarded guys. Secondly, even the best heavyweights are not as skilled, as fast, as good as the smaller guys. There could never be a heavyweight Willie Pep, even on Pep’s worst day.
When you look back at the time of a man like Roy Jones Jr. his years of recognition as the top pound-for-pound boxer in the world had little to do with competing in deep divisions. For a period of time he was engaging in activities like playing a semi-pro basketball game the morning of his bout with Eric Lucus and racking up wins over mandatory challengers. Sure, he had wins in his career over Bernard Hopkins and James Toney but beyond that he was drastically lacking in deep, meaningful wins. This was partially a product of competing in shallow divisions and partially because of an unwillingness to bend to the demands of the Darius Michaczewskis of the world.
Pound-for-pound in its purest intentions is a measure of both accomplishments and overall talent level. Aldo crushed Mike Brown, ending his ten fight win streak and making him look bad in the process. Sure, revisionism will allow you to say that he has since gone 2-3 so he clearly wasn’t that good to begin with. But men have been wrecked by crushing losses in the past, beatings have made great fighters age dramatically and ignoring everything Mike Brown had done in his run to the WEC title is quite unfair. Then there’s the destruction of Urijah Faber and the embarrassing of Manny Gamburyan.
145 pounds may be “weak” but there are still good fighters and Aldo has not even been slightly pushed by men with proven history at the top of the division (Brown and Faber) or by crafty veterans (Gamburyan, Cub Swanson). The combination of his raw talent and the success he has found led me to rank Aldo #3 in the world when I closed out 2010 with a top 100 pound-for-pound list a spot which I still find to be fair.
Arguments can certainly made for men like Frankie Edgar and Jon Fitch above Aldo but even so that would lower Aldo to #5. Honestly, I find making the case for Aldo in the top 5 to be much easier than his exclusion. His talent is too clear and his resume is just good enough.
Of course, maybe Mark Hominick defeats Aldo at UFC 129 and kills the entire debate.