best athlete and most dominant athlete are really quite different things imo but it seems like most of the discussion is based around most dominant

Brush up on your Eddie Murphy movies.

Jordan is my answer for the last 30 years. Karelin was obviously great but it's important to realize that wrestling is not the most popular sport so many of the people who potentiall could be great at it never train for it, for example how many guys in the NFL would've been great wrestlers had they decided to go that route? Everybody has played basketball at some point in their life, whether it's casual pickup or competitive so out of a much larger talent pool Jordan stands at the top. Jordan scored over 32k points for his career, the next closest perimeter player is Oscar Robertson who is 5500 points behind him which is 275 games averaging 20 PPG which is nearly 3 1/2 seasons. He was voted Defensive Player of the Year once and 9 times All-Defense 1st team along with his 5 MVPs and 6 titles.

Jerry Rice is a close 2nd. Barry Sanders also deserves some love, if he didn't retire at 30 he would've ran for over 20k yards in his career.

RIP George

George Frederick Blanda ("The Grand Old Man") (September 17, 1927 – September 27, 2010)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Blanda

the sad thing is ive seen coming to america at least 10 times

FYP

I also agree that Barry Sanders should get some love for carrying a terrible team on his back and still managing to be amazing.

I don't mind including these guys int he conversation, but saying dumb crap like this is only going to lose points for you. This is an absurd statement.

Maradona and Pele were good, but Ronaldo was better (the Brazilian Ronaldo, obv)

never going to get it over with 99% of sports crowds

but RC's dominance is the most amazing thing i've ever seen in sports. motocross champ every year he competed.

2 perfect seasons? most people can not comprehend what an unreal feat 1 is, 2 is complete insanity.


i don't think he's the best athlete though. when i think ultimate athleticism it requires a more broad skillset.

it really isn't. i'm working on finding the studies but MX is wayy underrespected in terms of physical demand.

also don't want to derail the thread so i guess i'll let it slide

I'm not gonna discuss whether Maradona or Pele was the best soccer player ever but Ronaldo was NOT even close to them. I wouldn't even put him in a top10 of all time list.

Clearly a fantasy decathlon-style event is needed to settle this.

X events, each measuring "athleticism", to be combined and weighted some how to provide an ultimate winner.

As a baseline, I'd start with:

Deadlift
Press (Or maybe benchpress)
40 yard dash
100m dash
1 mile run
US Marine Core Obstacle Course


Trying, and failing, to think of a way to measure the "athletism" of baseball/basketball/soccer/golf/tennis players, other than playing their chosen game.

If we're talking about domination of their sport, I'm surprised there's no mention of Don Bradman here?

This is the all time top 5 batting averages in test cricket, going back 150 years or so. An average of 40 is considered respectable. Over 50 and you are a great player. Bradman had an average of 99.94. Nobody has ever got close to it and it's very unlikely anyone ever will.


DG Bradman (Aus) 99.94
RG Pollock (SA) 60.97
GA Headley (WI) 60.83
H Sutcliffe (Eng) 60.73
E Paynter (Eng) 59.23

I don't disagree, but that is not what you said, End derailment.

It's clearly Bo Jackson and it's not even close. No recovery time, dominant in both sports professionally, dude was unreal.

I lean toward the multi-sport guys:

- Roy Jones Jr. was not only probably the best boxer in the history of boxing, he was a decent basketballer, too (he played a bit in the CBA). Talk about two vastly different sports and skill sets.

- Bo Jackson, obv. Outstanding running back and outfielder. Such a bummer his career was cut short.

- Deion Sanders, one of the greatest corners ever, a great return man, and a fine outfielder.

Side note: I once saw Sanders beat out an infield single from a front-row seat between home and first. His speed seemed superhuman. I'd never seen anything like that.

Gretzky, Jordan, Karelin and Maradona certainly deserve consideration. In his prime, Gretzky dominated hockey much more than Jordan did basketball. Jordan was able to change his game as his physical abilities slipped with age.

World-class decathaletes are obv terrific athletes as well. That's a really small competitor group, though.

Damn, I just remembered Jordan's brief baseball career. The ESPN 30 on 30 documentary on his year in minor league baseball showed that in the space of only one year, he improved enough to belong on a minor league field. With another year or two, who knows? That moves him up in my estimation. Probably to the top of the list.

Yea Jordan didn't hit well in the minor's but he did steal 31 bases which lets you know what kind of speed he had. I wouldn't expect somebody who is 6'6 to be much of a base stealer because so much of base stealing is the 1st step and with such long legs I wouldn't think you'd have an amazing first step.

No love for Secretariat?

Valentino Rossi imo. No one has dominated a sport for so much time as him.

And I'm not even into MotoGP.

Maybe it's Kenenisa Bekele.

Sure, Kelly Slater in surfing, Michael Schumacher in F1, Ricky Carmichael in Motocross....etc.

If we're going with lists of great achievements we could make a case for Roger Federer. I'm pretty sure no one will ever be able to repeat what Federer has done 16 and counting Grand Slam singles wins, 22 finals, 21 ATP wins, an olympic gold medal, 81% win rate for his career...

If it was of the last 50 years...Jim Brown would win hands down.

My pick as well. It's pretty impossible to give it to any team sport player.

Except he never beat El Guerrouj.

Oh wait...

How do you figure that? If we're talking pure athletic performance, you can surely single out players from team sports. Accomplishments? Why not?

Heh are you REALLY surprised nobody brought up a cricket player or did you just want to drop a random knowledge bomb ?