@ Game of Thrones (TV Show) A Human for Scale on Size of The Mountain's Actor

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Originally Posted by Nerkahia

Any list like this that does not include Michael Jordan cannot be taken seriously.

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Any person that cannot read the constraints the list was made under and realize Jordan was with the Wizards in 2000+ cannot be taken seriously.

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Originally Posted by Daxil Solshok

Yeah, he's the Babe Ruth of basketball. I would rank him as identical to Kobe in terms of game, but he blows him away on legend status.

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MJ said that Kobe stole his game from him. I think that holds up upon inspection. MJ meant it in a complementary way. He has been consistent in stating that Kobe is the one player in the NBA since MJ's retirement that he may get beaten by in his prime because Kobe has incorporated so much of MJ's game into his own game. It is hard to defeat your mirror is part of that I guess.

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Originally Posted by PPatty

I'm going to use "first really awesome competitor to transcend the sport" definition (if we just use "first big superstar" as the definition, then the Babe Ruth of baseball is Ty Cobb), so the Babe Ruths of various sports (at least from an American point of view) are:

Baseball - Babe Ruth
Basketball - Wilt Chamberlain
Football - Jim Thorpe
Hockey - Gordie Howe (Bobby Orr has a case)
Soccer - Pele
Men's golf - Arnold Palmer
Women's golf - Babe Didrikson Zaharias
Boxing - Joe Louis (Jack Johnson and Jack Dempsey have valid arguments)
Women's tennis - Billie Jean King
Men's tennis - Bjorn Borg
Horse racing - Man O' War
Stock car racing - Richard Petty
Indy car racing - Mario Andretti
MMA - Ronda Rousey
Sprinting - Jesse Owens
Gymnastics - Nadia Comaneci
Speed skating - Eric Heiden
Downhill skiing - Lindsey Vonn
Skateboarding - Tony Hawk
Snowboarding - Shaun White
Swimming - Mark Spitz
Cycling - Lance Armstrong (I know, I know, but still. Anyway, there's a case for Greg LeMond)
Chess - Bobby Fischer

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This is a pretty damn good list, possibly your best post of all-time. The only one I do not have tremendous confidence in is the NASCAR one. I think Bobby Allison may qualify over Petty here. Petty definitely has the stronger legacy but Bobby Allison is very significant as well and has a popular persona and was a participant in the most notorious event in NASCAR history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_...rborough_fight

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Originally Posted by Grindel

The Babe Ruth of Women's tennis is Serena Williams if it isn't Martina Navratilova. King was great, but not the greatest.

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Babe Ruth also isn't the greatest hitter ever. Billie Jean King is not the best women's tennis player of all time, but she was the best for a decent period and was certainly the first female tennis star to punch way beyond the boundaries of that sport.

Serena Williams is the Barry Bonds of tennis, complete with unproven steroid suspicions.

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Originally Posted by Grindel

And this is my entire point about Rousey - she's an OK fighter but she's known outside of MMA circles for the same reason Danica Patrick is - because she has boobs.

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Except that Rousey until her last fight was annihilating the competition, while Danica was mostly just going around in circles. Rousey isn't even the first not-bad-looking woman to compete in MMA.

On a broader note, Rousey is the Babe Ruth of her sport because she's the first MMA fighter who dominated for a stretch AND busted through to widespread, mainstream recognition. Some (mainly Chuck Liddell) made minor inroads. Brock Lesnar achieved some modicum of mainstream fame through non-MMA channels. Jon Jones almost broke through, but coke, booze, women and cars derailed that one.

Now if we're talking about things from a non-American point of view, then maybe Anderson Silva or GSP gets the Babe Ruth tag; from what I understand, they're pretty well known in his home country. But he's still just a niche figure in the USA.

Billie Jean King broke barriers but she never was a transcendent superstar like Serena Williams is. That is not what your list was about, if you are going by people who broke through barriers baseball should have been Jackie Robinson.

Tiger Woods is the first golfer who made normal people care about golf. When he was good is the only time I ever watched golf. I don't watch it anymore.

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Originally Posted by MI Redeux

Billie Jean King broke barriers but she never was a transcendent superstar like Serena Williams is. That is not what your list was about, if you are going by people who broke through barriers baseball should have been Jackie Robinson.

Tiger Woods is the first golfer who made normal people care about golf. When he was good is the only time I ever watched golf. I don't watch it anymore.

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Agreed, you're arbitrarily manipulating your criteria, Ppatty. Babe Ruth didn't need to break through anything, baseball was already America's pastime when he dominated the game. He didn't put baseball on the map. Rousey (who's actually rather homely without the glamour treatment, which is fine she could absolutely kick my ass in seconds) didn't put MMA on the map either, and did not face the sort of competition the male fighters faced, because c'mon. She's the Mike Tyson of female MMA, which is great, but she's not some once in a lifetime talent. Great marketing crew though.

It wouldn't be impossible to argue that Babe Ruth is the Barry Bonds of baseball either, if Bonds had been a serviceable pitcher. Ruth and Bonds are A and A1. Rousey is neither A nor A1 in MMA, although she's absolutely A in women's MMA. Nobody's going to argue that Lisa Leslie is the Babe Ruth of basketball, but her career and popularity were similar to Rousey's. Don't let the sparklies of the marketing machine trip you up. Great female fighter, absolutely, not the greatest MMA fighter of all time.

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Originally Posted by Grindel

Rousey (who's actually rather homely without the glamour treatment, which is fine she could absolutely kick my ass in seconds) didn't put MMA on the map either, and did not face the sort of competition the male fighters faced, because c'mon.

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You're right about the competition she faced: she faced better competition than the men, for her weight class (which is the only measure that matters). At one point she'd defended her title against every person in the top five in her class, something no other UFC fighter could claim. Didn't put MMA on the map?

http://mmapayout.com/category/pay-per-view/

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Originally Posted by Article

Rousey’s popularity is not limited just to the UFC or MMA. Google and Yahoo! Search engines reflect that she is a popular search item. She was the top trending athlete for Google in 2015 and the 5th rated overall trending search in the United States. She was also the most searched athlete of 2015 according to Yahoo’s search engine.

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Give me another MMA fighter that's done that. I get that you're hung up on the one loss she's suffered in her pro MMA career. But she is a big deal.

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Originally Posted by Grindel

She's the Mike Tyson of female MMA....

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That's funny, because if you asked a lot of people to name a boxer, the first one they'd say would be Mike Tyson.

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Originally Posted by Delores Mulva

You're right about the competition she faced: she faced better competition than the men, for her weight class (which is the only measure that matters). At one point she'd defended her title against every person in the top five in her class, something no other UFC fighter could claim. Didn't put MMA on the map?

http://mmapayout.com/category/pay-per-view/

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No, she didn't. Which of those stories on that link should I read, there are a whole bunch of them?

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But she is a big deal.

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Absolutely. Just not the GOAT regardless of gender.

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That's funny, because if you asked a lot of people to name a boxer, the first one they'd say would be Mike Tyson.

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Absolutely, and nobody would argue that Tyson was the GOAT. I appreciate your coming around to my thinking on this :)

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Originally Posted by Grindel

...nobody would argue that Tyson was the GOAT.

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PPatty didn't ask for the GOAT. Re-read what he mentioned as the criteria for his list.

What we're doing is parsing whether she's really awesome or not ;) I say she's great, but not really awesome. She's a pretty good talent in a very weak pool of talent who has an awesome marketing team.

I say anyone who beats their peers in seconds, consistently, is really awesome. The pool of talent being weak doesn't really enter the equation. Nobody is sticking an asterisk beside the scoring records of hockey players who played in the 80's, even though that was the biggest shooting gallery in the league's history, or tossing out pitching records from the dead ball era. You can only measure athletes against others in the same era, and Rousey was (and may still be, if she cares to be) head and shoulders above them.

You also keep going on about marketing. The UFC has been consistently surprised at how popular she has become, so it's not like they've been the ones behind this. Her "team" is her mom, her sister, those bums that have been coaching her, and the BF that was accused of beating on a prior GF. I guarantee you that "team" didn't make a compelling pitch to Beyonce to feature Rousey's voice at her concert the way she did. It was Rousey's words that did it. Are we now discounting an athlete's ability to build themselves up?

No we're not, we're just noting that the talent level in women's MMA is paper-thin, which is going to make anyone look more amazing than they probably are.

So Rousey's appearing in movies and she doesn't have an agent? She's showing up on every tv show that's out there doing interviews without a booking agent? How'd she pull that off? Major props.

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Originally Posted by MI Redeux

Billie Jean King broke barriers but she never was a transcendent superstar like Serena Williams is. ... Tiger Woods is the first golfer who made normal people care about golf.

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Your recency bias is showing. Billie Jean King was a major figure in the 1970s. She and Borg were the first tennis players who were well known by non-tennis fans. As for Woods, he's not the first or even the second golfer who made normal people care about golf.

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Originally Posted by Grindel

Agreed, you're arbitrarily manipulating your criteria, Ppatty. Babe Ruth didn't need to break through anything, baseball was already America's pastime when he dominated the game. He didn't put baseball on the map. Rousey (who's actually rather homely without the glamour treatment, which is fine she could absolutely kick my ass in seconds) didn't put MMA on the map either

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Babe Ruth didn't put baseball on the map, but he saved the game. Baseball was fucked after the 1919 Black Sox scandal; Ruth made it OK again.

But Rousey has put MMA on the map for many people. I've seen a lot of Web traffic numbers over the years; she really does generate more attention in a way that no other male fighter (and for that matter, few female athletes in any sport) has even come close to doing.

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Originally Posted by Grindel

She's the Mike Tyson of female MMA

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As Delores notes, he transcended his sport too. If his phenomenon had happened in 1915, he would be the Babe Ruth of boxing.

And no, I'm not asking for the GOAT. Almost no one on the list I put out is a GOAT of their sport -- but they were the first great competitors in their fields to penetrate the popular consciousness beyond their niche (i.e., transcend their sport).

But if we're going to go there, then the GOATs of various sports:

Baseball - Bonds or Mays for position players (better fielders and baserunners than Ruth, against integrated competition and much more advanced pitching)
Basketball - Kareem Abdul Jabaar (I know, Michael. I stand by Kareem)
Football - Jim Brown (Career average of 5.2 yards a carry? I'll take that)
Hockey - Wayne Gretzky (only hardcore hockey purist nerds would even think about debating this)
Men's golf - Jack Nicklaus
Boxing - Sugar Ray Robinson
Women's tennis - Steffi Graf (for now; Serena's coming, though)
Men's tennis - Roger Federer (doesn't look like Nadal's knees will let him make a run at this)
Horse racing - Secretariat
Stock car racing - Richard Petty (but maybe the hardest comparison across eras for any sport, given the differences between then and now)
Indy car racing - AJ Foyt (as many titles as Mario and more wins overall)
MMA - Fedor Emelianenko (Yes, I hear you, Anderson Silva fans)
Sprinting - Usain Bolt
Speed skating - Eric Heiden
Swimming - Michael Phelps
Cycling - Eddy Merckx
World's Strongest Man - Mariusz Pudzianowski

Good list. I'd put Chamberlain above Jabaar and Sampras above Federer but only to quibble.

We really need go retitle this thread. I propose Sports and Shit.

MI can request a different title, I gave it a new prefix of Sports

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Originally Posted by Grindel

So Rousey's appearing in movies and she doesn't have an agent? She's showing up on every tv show that's out there doing interviews without a booking agent? How'd she pull that off? Major props.

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Rousey is with WME; Beyonce is with CAA for music and ICM for acting. There's no damned way WME convinced Beyonce or her agents to cross-promote her. And it was that moment at the Beyonce concert that really pushed general awareness of Rousey.

On PPatty's list: I was actually going to bring up Gretzky not being on the list as evidence that it wasn't intended as a GOAT list. Yeah, the people who argue for anyone other than Gretzky (usually an early 1900's goalie, Orr, or Lemieux) are crazy hockey nerds that don't see the forest for the trees.

I take issue with the MMA listing, but for reasons other than Fedor being amazing. I find it hard to declare someone a GOAT in a sport with multiple weight classes. I'd be much more comfortable with multiple GOATs, one per class. It's also tough for me to compare people from leagues with very different rules, especially including drug testing rules. I know that's a lesser issue with every all-time comparison, given how rules have changed in all sports over the years (and PED definitions/testing), but it seems especially severe comparing, say, a modern UFC fighter to someone in the PED-infested days of PRIDE.

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Originally Posted by Delores Mulva

I take issue with the MMA listing, but for reasons other than Fedor being amazing. I find it hard to declare someone a GOAT in a sport with multiple weight classes.

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I don't see it as being all that different from comparing athletes from different eras. There are ways of judging a fighter's dominance and skill apart from their particular size (hence, the popularity of pound-for-pound rankings in boxing and MMA). Apart from that, in a few cases, we see fighters cut across weight classes to fight much larger opponents; Fedor is the GOAT partly because he kicked ass while giving up considerable amounts of weight against most of his foes.

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Originally Posted by Delores Mulva

It's also tough for me to compare people from leagues with very different rules, especially including drug testing rules. I know that's a lesser issue with every all-time comparison, given how rules have changed in all sports over the years (and PED definitions/testing), but it seems especially severe comparing, say, a modern UFC fighter to someone in the PED-infested days of PRIDE.

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Except that we do have several examples of athletes who spanned both eras (and UFC wasn't clean back then either; only the most careless of people got caught in any combat sport before 2012) and remain top-10 guys today.

necro bump

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https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comment..._professional/

[Wilt Chamberlain Dominating Professional basketball leagues at age 16, and 17http://imgur.com/km9iH6q

http://imgur.com/NmbZnL8.jpg

http://imgur.com/2nhBTqC.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/BBnYsYc.jpg



Wilt Chamberlain, or as he was first known, "George Marcus", secretly dominated professional basketball under that assumed identity at age 16 for the Pittsburgh Raiders. Even as a kid against men playing professionally he averaged 40.5ppg by age 17. I found game recaps of multiple 46 point performances for the Quakertown Fay's at age 17, and at least one 44 point game even at age 16 for the Pittsburgh Raiders.

This is not only not often talked about, it's NEVER talked about. I've seen only a few references to his professional career that predated college basketball. When I researched this I found out it got him into potential trouble with the NCAA and so it was kept hushed and perhaps left to be forgotten.

*EDIT* Allow me to plug one other researcher who I've come to learn first shared the photographs of Wilt playing for the Fay's a few years ago. I found him on Twitter, and here's a link to a fascinating video he produced!

https://twitter.com/storyrd

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=un5HPRWW4Yk

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The Mountain laces up the gloves and tries going at it with an actual boxer, albeit in an exhibition:

https://youtu.be/WI1NfKc-EPI

He's kludgy, but all things considered, could have been a lot worse for a first outing against a pro. And while he has to work a lot on his punches and his defense, he definitely seems to be able to take a punch, something that eludes many fighters with far more skill.