4. Conor McGregor
McGregor is a hard man to judge at 145 pounds. He even received some first-place votes, though I personally had him at No. 5. On the one hand, he was undefeated in the UFC's featherweight division, including knocking out the seemingly unbeatable Jose Aldo, then 15-0 in the WEC and UFC with nine title defenses, in just 13 seconds, not to mention knockouts of Chad Mendes, Dennis Siver and Dustin Poirier, and a dominant decision over Max Holloway. Closer scrutiny, however, pokes holes in this rosy narrative. McGregor only had seven fights at featherweight, and the versions of Poirier and Holloway were young and mere shadows of what they would later become. This was proven emphatically when that very same Poirier knocked out McGregor in their second and third meetings. That those decisive losses occurred at 155 instead of 145 pounds is very much a technicality when the relative skill of the two fighters is concerned. Moreover, Mendes had taken the fight against McGregor on about a week’s notice, just enough time to cut weight, and was dominating and brutalizing McGregor for the first round and a half before his cardio understandably run out. Does a Mendes with a full training camp beat the McGregor from that night? Possibly. The knockout of Aldo is undeniably great, but it also doesn't necessarily mean that McGregor is head and shoulders above the Brazilian, or would have won a hypothetical rematch. Quick knockouts can be deceiving that way. B.J. Penn, for instance, recorded an even faster knockout, 11 seconds, of Japanese star Caol Uno. Over a year later, they had a rematch, which ended in a hard-fought decision draw. Similarly, two other fighters on this list, A.J. McKee and Patricio Freire, had an initial showdown where McKee stopped his legendary opponent in about two minutes. In the rematch, Freire won a close, 25-minute decision. McGregor deserves to be in the top half of this list, no question, but I don't see him as impressive as a few other featherweights here.
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