Sherdog’s Top 10: Greatest Heavyweights

9. Randy Couture

Couture illustrates the difference between ranking the greatest heavyweights of all time, as opposed to the greatest fighters of all time, thanks to his accomplishments at light heavyweight. He is a three-time UFC heavyweight champion, having won the title from Maurice Smith in 1997, vacated it and then come back to defeat reigning champion Kevin Randleman in 2000. Then, in 2007, he managed one of the most amazing, inspirational victories in MMA history, as the apparently washed-up 43-year-old who clocked in at just 6-foot-1 and 225 pounds defeated gigantic heavyweight champ Tim Sylvia, who was seven inches taller, 50 pounds heavier and a decade younger. Couture made a career and legend of such unlikely, amazing wins, showing off his endless intelligence, heart and will to win.

I had Couture higher on the list in recognition of his earlier era, but I have to admit that he had some bad losses, even relative to the times. In his next fight after beating Smith for the UFC title, Couture was armbarred in 99 seconds by Enson Inoue at Vale Tudo Japan. His loss to Mikhail Ilyukhin was illegitimate, as I've noted, but being guillotined by Valentijn Overeem in less than a minute certainly was. Couture also fought twice against an excellent challenger in Pedro Rizzo, and while the rematch was a convincing stoppage, the first is a hotly debated decision to this day—personally, I scored it in favor of Rizzo. After that, Couture was stopped in two rounds by Josh Barnett and then again by even less impressive challenger Ricco Rodriguez, whom he dominated for two rounds before gassing and getting beaten up. This prompted talks of retirement, but as we know, Couture went back to 205 pounds, reinvented himself, retired again, and then had that magical win over Sylvia.

Couture's third reign didn't last long, being stopped by the much younger and stronger Brock Lesnar, but he did manage to stop a tough challenger in Gabriel Gonzaga right before that. The criteria for this list is dominance for one's era and time at the top, and Couture was certainly that for the late 90s and early 00s under UFC rules, and even re-emerged in the late 00s, remarkable longevity for a man who was nearly 34 at the time of his mixed martial arts debut. However, his absolute prime is much lower than everyone else on this list, even taking era into account.

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