LeESPN ranks LeFraud ahead of Tom Brady on list of Top 100 Professional Athletes of the 21st Century...

[ElJorge]

I'm fine with BJJ not being represented. Ultra-small talent pool, super-niche sport. Fine (actually, correct not just fine).

Even Teddy Riner (2 olympic golds, 11 Worlds golds) for Judo or something like that....I can *maybe* accept on a very nice day, although Judo has non-trivial amounts of representation (not so much in America).

But those excuses don't hold up for wrestling. Very deep talent pool internationally (albeit, not in GR as much as freestyle), historic sport, heavily woven into the fabric of many cultures around the world. America...if not at the top, generally very close overall.

Clearly not on the level of Candace Parker though. They can kiss my Black ass.

Yea that’s fair… I mean some on the list mos def didn’t belong. And no troll I expected MMA to get a tiny bit more love. Demetrius Johnson maybe? Khabib?

[Bush4Ever.]

Mighty Mouse isn't really a name to casuals at places like ESPN.

Khabib doesn't have the 3rd best resume ever, but I think if they extended the list he might be the next guy they pick because of the combination of resume and name appeal. Maybe Anderson Silva.

I just think they don't have an understanding of sport on the international level. But to be fair, that's probably pretty hard to do at meaningful depth within a given individual....there are so many sports. I know basketball, MMA, and BJJ very well. Wrestling pretty well. Modern baseball not much but could probably get up to speed quickly. I know enough about soccer to recognize famous names. There is probably some Hindu version of Babe Ruth in Cricket that I've never even heard of. I don't even know what badminton is other than it looks like a lazier version of volleyball and the thing they hit is called a shuttleCOCK.

And so on...

Even if you have a large sample size of voters, if they are 80-90 percent replicas of each other, you still will introduce bias.

[wailuaFC]

Messi and it isn’t particularly close. He’s at the point where he should be clearly on the Mount Rushmore of athletes

Who do you think the 2nd greatest soccer player ever is behind Messi?

I could hear arguments for CR7, Pele, and Diego.

I think Christiano has a great argument for a top 5 forward of all time, but he doesn’t create enough opportunities for others and provides somehow less than Messi defensively. I think zidane, pele, maradonna, and cruyff are probably my next tier after Messi being in his own tier

[AtiliusRegulus]

[Bush4Ever.]

I'm looking at the list more carefully now and not seeing Saitiev or Mijain Lopez for free/greco-roman wrestling.

Saitiev split his time pre-00 to post-00 so it's whatever I guess, but Lopez has FOUR Olympic golds stretching from 2008-2020, and FIVE golds/Three Silvers at the Worlds.

Not as impressive as Jason Kidd I guess.

Lopez won his *fifth* gold.

2008-2024, all golds.

Only athlete in history to win 5x in a single event, IIRC.