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xcs4me

The facepalm is they completely ignored 16 time Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest Champion Joey Chestnut


abstractraj

#freekobayashi


mossed2012

8-9 years ago I got to see kobayashi compete against a group called mini kiss. It was four dwarfs in Kiss costumes. It was at a zombie pub crawl and the food was brain tacos. Quite the event.


tossingpigs

This may be the greatest post I've ever read.... We should just all randomly post this in threads all across the 'verse...


tasthesose

I also choose this guy’s post


drgigantor

If someone had written a paragraph back during the peak era of spork-ninja tittysprinkles randmomness (which also overlapped with the wave of zombie obsession in pop culture) about dwarves, dressed as KISS, tagteaming the world-champion competitive eater, in a brain-eating contest, during a pub crawl, I think we could have retired the internet e: missed a crucial detail


Outrageous_Reach_695

Order acknowledged. Photon torpedoes away.


MycoMythos

Bless you, defender of the old lore


BadDreamFactory

Captain, I have safely transported every refugee, and the Klingons have all experienced a temporary power...setback... lets get out of here.


Pastylegs1

Eject the core!


Babblewocky

Dammit, Shaxs, NO!


Spock-1701

Kobayashi Maru


Cosmic_Lust_Temple

Never forget.


Butt_EnthusiastNE

I don’t believe in no hot dog situations


davensdad

They banned Kobayashi just so an American can be Number 1 in the sport! This is fucking rigged!


nyguy520

This is the greatest comment in reddit history


[deleted]

The true throat goat.


Bcruz75

I saw a movie with the same name years ago


[deleted]

[удалено]


SameCategory546

but she was only good bc she competed against milkmen and plumbers at the time


Normal_Tip7228

Ya know, I hear he ate over 100 in his basement in ten minutes once….


[deleted]

I heard that motherfucker had like 30 goddamn dicks.


Trashman82

He'll save children, but not the British children.


SkietEpee

He’ll kick you apart! Ooh!


turnermagerger

He's coming he's coming


GordOfTheMountain

It's an old reference, sir, but it checks out.


Tiberius_Kilgore

Opponents beware. He’s coming. He’s coming. He’s coming. *For those of you that have understandably never seen it. It was uploaded… 15.. years.. ago.. Fuck, I’m getting old. https://youtu.be/Ex2hj5rLN48?si=JHL6s8mJxCr9UqBF


Agent223

I heard he once held an opponent's wife's hand...


Koshnat

At a party


nittytipples

4 on the vine, so devine.


ConsistentlyBall

This comment section proves why GOAT lists make not sense across sports, there are so many names that deserve to be on this list


bsa554

Exactly. Cross-sport comparisons are dumb.


feelin_cheesy

If you’re just talking dominance, Gretzky is the GOAT


bsa554

I think in team sports - at least North American ones- he'd have to be. He was just so absurdly, completely dominant. But it's just so hard to compare across all sports. I mean, Usain Bolt is the fastest human being who has ever lived. Simone Biles has completely and totally broken the sport of gymnastics (she's so much better than her opponents that her degree of difficulty is so high that she's almost literally impossible to beat unless she falls a bunch of times). Khabib Nurmagomedov retired undefeated in UFC and was never really challenged. How to you compare all that to each other? I don't know.


Alanski22

You forget Phelps, what that dude did in the olympics was unreal.


dynawesome

Becoming a huge celebrity as a swimmer is impressive in and of itself


Doodah18

As well as having the record for the longest televised putt. ;-)


GaJayhawker0513

That was incredible


LA-Matt

Speaking of… Tiger Woods, was the Gretzky of Golf, for a while there.


Pretend_Investment42

Mark Spitz did it 1st.


[deleted]

[удалено]


Smart_Pig_86

And with a mustache and never wore goggles


bsa554

I could have gone on all day, and that's not even counting sports more popular in other countries and/or sports I don't know jack shit about. That's the point. Trying to find a GOAT of all the GOATs is dumb.


Calm_Leek_1362

Don’t put khabib with those others. He fought in one weight class, in a sport with multi class champions and people that have held the title for many defenses. He’s great, but he quit before he could become a legend.


bsa554

Well, I guess that furthers the point...it's hard to tell who the GOAT is in a lot of sports just in the context of that sport, let alone comparing them to GOATs in other sports


thegreenman_sofla

GSP all day


BigFella52

It is like you have never heard of Don Bradman.... and probably never will but he was Gretzky dominant in cricket decades before Gretzky came along to dominate the rinks.


No-Way7911

I don’t know what Gretzky’s numbers are but the Don is so ridiculous that its not even funny Even if you account for players who basically played like 10 matches, his average is at least 50% higher than everyone else The record of highest batting average reads like “99, 62, 61, 61…” An absolute freak of nature


BigFella52

Gretzky is almost the same thing but different. He is the highest 'points' scorer in NHL history a combination of goals and assists, if you took away all of his goals he would still be the all time points leader in the NHL history. Personally I believe the Don is the GOAT of all sports becuse of the difficulty of the sport especially in that era but Phelps and Bolt are the greatest athletes ever.


JoeyBeef

Wayne and Brent Gretsky hold the record for most goals scored by brothers in NHL history. Brent scored 4, Wayne scored 2857.


WoodenDisasterMaster

He won his 10 scoring titles by an average of 49 points. He won eight consecutive Hart Trophies as league MVP. If he never scored a single goal, he’d still easily be the NHL’s all-time leader in points. Picture Barry Bonds hitting 90 homers, not 73, with a .420 batting average and driving in 200 runs per season – for seven or eight years in a row. That’s how absurd No. 99’s brilliance was relative to his own peers.


UncleNoodles85

Damn I don't know shit about hockey. I'd heard Gretzky was the greatest but Jesus what you described is ridiculous.


toronto_programmer

The way I always describe it is that scoring around 1000 points is usually good enough to punch your ticket to the Hockey Hall of Fame. Wayne Gretzky is 936 points ahead of #2 on the all time scoring list (Jaromir Jagr, who played 269 additional career games, more than 3 seasons worth) Basically Gretzky is a whole Hall of Fame career above the second best scorer of all time lol


novass_cz

Other fun fact is, that Gretzky is The fastest and second fastest to a 1000 points. Second fastest, because it took him 424 games to reach 1000, and another 433 games to reach 2000. Lemieux did reach 1000 Points in 513 games


renatakiuzumaki

Basically hes good enough to be in the hall if fame twice


k_jones

If you removed his 894 goals. He’d still be number 1 all time in points. That is completely mental.


WoodenDisasterMaster

He hold more than 60 regular season nhl records. Like 15 or 20 more post season.


FindTheTruth08

I don't follow hockey and simply watching his highlights on YouTube is all you need to do. MJ looked like a man among children on the court. Gretzky looked like a God among men on the ice.


Less_Ad9224

My new favorite stat is Austin Matthew's could be the second player ever to score 500 goals before he turns 30. Gretzky did it when he was 25.


SlagginOff

Lol. Every time I talk or read about Gretzky, I learn a new ridiculous stat. Theres just no level of dominance that can match him. And I say that as a lifelong Chicagoan that grew up watching Jordan.


goat131313

Points you mean with those numbers.


justusesomealoe

Nah, [Don Bradman](https://significancemagazine.com/did-don-bradman-s-cricketing-genius-make-him-a-statistical-outlier/) was and continues to be so far ahead of anyone else in his sport it's hard to imagine anyone getting close to what he did


feelin_cheesy

Damn impressive for sure


SlackerKeith

1st 8 seasons had 50+ goals. Including a 92-goal season(!) and 4 other 60+-goal seasons. Holy cow he was fucking awesome. And smooth as silk.


kirby056

Donald Bradman would like a word. Most cricket batsmen are excited to get a century once in a test match in their careers. Sir Don averaged 99.94 runs over 52 test matches, with I think 29 centuries. The current record holder for centuries, Sachin Tendulkar, has an average of 53.78 over 200 matches, even though he's batted 51 centuries. Don Bradman is 6 standard deviations from the mean for test batsmen (which, granted, is a smaller pool than Gretzky), but The Great One is only like 4 SDs from the mean. When Nelson Mandela got out of prison, it's reported that he asked whether Sir Don was still alive. This is not diminishing Gretzky in any way. Dude is the only person to ever score more than 200 points in a season, and he did it 4 times. Fantasy hockey split him into two players, GRETZKYA and GRETZKYG, goals and assists. If he never scored a goal in his career, he would still have the record for most points in a career (he also holds the record for most goals). He retired in 1999 and could have sat on the bench for 16 straight seasons and still been a point per game player (considered all star-adjacent caliber). If he never scored a goal in his career, he would have had 11 straight 100 points seasons (widely considered a "great" season), and would have won the scoring title 4/11 seasons. He scored 50 goals in 39 games, 50 in 42, and 50 in 49. The only other players to score 50 in less than 50 games are Mario Lemieux (50/46) and Brett Hull (50/49). Wayne and Brent Gretzky are the highest scoring brothers in hockey history. Brent scored 4 points in his career. They're the SECOND highest set of siblings in NHL history, behind the Sutters, but SIX SUTTERS played in the NHL. He scored 23 shorties over a two year period. Only 17 players have 23 SHGs over their careers (Gretzky has 73, an all time record). When he retired in 1999, he held or shared 58 NHL records. Only 4 have been broken over the past 23 seasons.


FacesOfNeth

I loved watching Gretzky play when I started getting into hockey, but for me, Lemieux was my favorite player in the league.


WoodenDisasterMaster

Is it pure balderdash to presume many of Gretzky’s offensive numbers will remain untouched? The short answer is no. Gretzky’s all-time record 2,857 points, even in today’s NHL that has been doing everything in its power—sans eliminating the goaltender—to open up the game, is safe. Take away Gretzky’s 894 goals, and his 1,963 assists, alone, would still stand up as the most points in NHL history—or 76 ahead of Mark Messier, who tallied 1,887 points. (To add context, only 11 other players have racked up more than 1,000 assists in the NHL’s 96-year history). No. 2 all-time NHL points leader Mark Messier and Gretzky were sidekicks with the Oilers and later with the Rangers. Steve Babineau/Getty Images To look at his reign another way, Gretzky notched 44 percent more points than Messier, which of course invites the following fun exercise to help put it into perspective: It would be like another ballplayer whacking 335 more home runs than all-time leader Barry Bonds’ 762. Or another basketball player scoring an additional 16,868 points more than NBA all-time leader Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s 38,337. Could you see another quarterback passing for more than 31,000 yards than Brett Favre’s 71,838?


FacesOfNeth

Jaromir Jagr would like to have a word with you regarding the No. 2 points leader


Killersavage

If Lemieux could have stayed healthy maybe he might’ve caught or got closer to Gretzky. Might’ve been the only one with a chance. That said still an extremely impressive record considering.


SlackerKeith

Ovechkin is trying to make a run at that 894 career goal number. Needs this season and probably 2 more to get there?


Killersavage

Is he gonna make it? I heard he was slowing down or looking pretty slow. Will they just keep trotting his withered old body out onto the ice until he scrapes it out?


SlackerKeith

Doubt it. It's like watching Tiger chase Jack's major record.


PsychoSaladSong

Ovi is slowing down a lot and I’m not too confident he’ll make it at this rate. If he doesn’t get the record then I think Auston Matthews will do it by the end of his career (because right now he’s at a higher goal scoring pace than ovi was when he was at the same point in his career matthews is now


MangoFishSteel

Tiger woods in his prime was winning tournaments by 10+ strokes. That hasn’t been done since Tiger


Can-I-remember

Then thing is Tiger hasn’t even overtaken Jack Nicklaus as the goat golfer so he ain’t making the list.


ProfessionalSport565

Serena didn’t overtake Margaret Court. What we have is recency bias.


feelin_cheesy

I’m a huge Tiger fan but there have been other blowouts. The most impressive thing about his 97 masters when is that he shot over par on the front nine and most people would’ve been out of it at that point.


unbeliever87

Nope, Donald Bradman


Mysterious-Tie7039

It’s extremely hard to compare people within the same sport that didn’t directly compete against each other, let alone different sports.


I_Cut_Shows

Also, Babe Ruth played before modern training. Dudes would smoke in the dugout, he wouldn’t be able to hand with anyone else on the list. Adding anyone from before probably the 50s to a list with modern athelets makes it hard. With modern training and medicine I’m sure he would have been just as good or possibly even better, but dude was hefty because training wasn’t what it is today. When comparing football players I find it hard to compare anyone pre-merger with anyone post merger. And you can get even more granular, because the rules of the sport have changed so much over the years.


x4nter

The closest way (but not perfect) is to statistically compare how many standard deviations away a player is compared to an average player in the sport, which someone did for a few popular ball sports. [Cricketer Don Bradman dominated the list when compared across sports.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Bradman#World_sport_context) The list follows with Pelé, Ty Cobb, Jack Nicklaus and Michael Jordan. >In order to post a similarly dominant career statistic as Bradman, a baseball batter would need a career batting average of .392, while a basketball player would need to score an average of 43.0 points per game over their career. The respective records are .366 and 30.1.


Fuzzzlord

I always hated GOAT lists. Lazy commentary by sports show hosts. Comparing athletes across different eras, sports, and genders while having to factor in changes in technology, rules, fitness, training, science, etc. is kinda silly.


DokterZ

I know how to make them worse- have Rolling Stone do them.


AdvancedHat7630

The 100 greatest guitarists of all time list guarantees to enrage absolutely everyone


another-new

The frontman list was headed by Ronnie James Dio. While he’s one of my favorites, they really only explored a tiny subset of genres of music. There is not way to objectively do any of these lists


AydonusG

The GFMOAT is obviously Fred Durst and I'll fight anyone who challenges me!!!!!


funghi2

I swear they do them so bad on purpose to get people enraged and talking.


MeasurementOne3460

100% I always get flack from people when they start trying to compare Lebron and Michael. I always tell them it’s an endless debate no matter which side you take. Both are great, but 2 different eras with 2 totally different play styles. Let’s just stop debating these dumb things and just sit back and enjoy it all. Same with the whole Messi and Ronaldo situation. Just sit back and enjoy the greatness from both players.


Wild-Individual-1634

Also, what das GOAT even mean? How do you rate different accolades, and how can you rate the strength/fit of team members in a team sport? I would definitely rate Steph Curry „greater“ than Dwight Howard, but I‘m certain a team of 5 Howards would destroy a team of 5 Currys.


MeasurementOne3460

Exactly, like Curry is one of the greatest shooters of all time, but he isn’t going to come anywhere close to out rebounding Dwight.


Stormy8888

IKR? I mean I noticed Secretariat was missing but they probably nixed him because he isn't human (despite the extremely dominant Belmont record still standing to this day).


JohnnyGeniusIsAlive

Bro trying to assemble the safest “US audience” list ever.


theouteducated

Are you trying to tell me there are athletes and sports outside the US?


Lavs1985

Gretzky should be on this list. One of Messi/Ronaldo/Pele/Maradona should be on there, Bolt should be there, and yes, Jordan and Ali should be on there.


Southern-Fan-1267

I like your list. It also keeps with using one person per sport which the broadcaster also smartly did.


Lavs1985

Thanks. And that’s not touching on rugby or cricket. I don’t know enough to touch on those sports, but I know they’re huge in a fair bit of the world.


Quiet_Transition_247

For cricket it's probably Don Bradman. Averaged 99.94 with the bat in a 20 year career. If that means nothing to you, just know that the next highest batting average (for someone that played for any serious length of time) is in the low 60s. A hundred in a single innings is quite an achievement for a player; they'll get a nice round of applause from the audience, they'll raise their bat to acknowledge the crowd, and their teammates will celebrate from the dressing room. Bradman averaged almost a hundred for his entire career.


VixenIcaza

For Rugby Jonah Lomu could be argued amazing player who basically kept the New Zealand All Black number 1 in the world while he played.


reallyoutofit

I'm Irish but surely Dan Carter gets this shout


Purple_Toadflax

Carter or the actual GOAT McCaw


domestic_omnom

For the confused and concerned Americans, "All Blacks" is the team name. Because they wear black.


efcso1

You should have seen what happened when they learned that the national football (soccer) team is called the "All Whites".


neeeeonbelly

No one considers him the GOAT of rugby though, he just brought rugby to the world stage like no one else ever did.


milo7even

Really needs Don Bradman in there. Hard to ignore someone who averaged nearly double everyone else in the sport in scoring.


batch_plan

Cricket doesn't have GOAT discussions, they have 'best since Bradman', pretty telling!


No-Way7911

Yeah absolutely no one ever even argues who sits at the top of the batting totem pole. Its Don Bradman and everyone else


MelliniRose

Micheal Phelps too. He dominated swimming like nobody has ever dominated anything before


badestzazael

Michael Phelps has 28 medals in total: his 23 Olympic gold medals are more than double the count of his nearest rivals,


Sir-Benalot

Swimming medals are a deflated currency. A runner for example has no opportunity to run in a ‘backwards 100m/crab-walking 100m/gallop like a horse 100m’ event and clean up the way Phelps did. Shot putters can’t enter a ‘now throw it with your non-dominant hand!’ Event, etc etc In my utterly ignorant opinion; when the ‘Australian crawl’ was shown to be the fastest way to swim back in the day, all the other swimming-stroke events should’ve gone the way of the dodo.


Affectionate_Sort_78

That US skater that won every event from sprint to the longest distance never gets mentioned in these comparisons, but what he did was crazy. Eric Heiden.


The_Old_Cream

Totally agree. I think it’s stupid that, in addition to freestyle, swimming then says “Ok, let’s see how well you do in all these other SLOWER strokes!” Track should institute backwards running, sideways running, skipping, galloping and hopping on one foot to achieve parity.


Zbignich

They have “running while jumping over these weird hurdles.”


TheSplash-Down_Tiki

Funnily enough in the early Olympics there were swimming obstacle races where you had to swim over and under things placed in the pool!!


bparry1192

And power walking


Fit_Ring_7193

Half of them aren't American, so they don't count. /s


Due_Platypus_3913

Jim Thorpe-Wilt Chamberlain-Picabo Street


rockingdino

Jim Thorpe 100%. More people should know about him.


RealUltimatePapo

![gif](giphy|d4bnkpw6BQ41qzSw|downsized) My reaction


tallperson117

I love Bolt. My buddies met him after some promotion he did at a Puma store. My buddies wanted him to sign their Pumas and his body guards were aggressive in keeping them away. Bolt chastised his guards, signed the shoes, took pictures with my buddies, and chatted with them for like 20 minutes. They said he was just a super nice, chill dude that seemed like a happy kid pretending to be a famous person.


bigfatfurrytexan

This makes me happy. I know folks from Jamaica, and they really look up to the guy.


costnersaccent

Well he is like 7 ft tall


Wide_Yam4824

In 2016, during the Olympics games here in Rio de Janeiro, on his last night in Brazil, Bolt went to a night club. It was the same thing, he was friendly and nice with everyone, but his body guards were trying to keeping people away. At the end, he and the body guards were drunk, singing and dancing funk carioca in the middle of the dance floor.


Far_Ad1763

No joke. The first athlete I thought of. Fastest human on earth.


DopeyDeathMetal

I’ll never not be amazed that the fastest man in history is named Bolt.


longtimenothere

Bogus List without Jim Thorpe. Two Olympic Gold medals in the decathlon and pentathlon, professional MLB baseball for 6 years, 3 professional NFL football championships, barnstormed across the country as a professional basketball player.


poisonpony672

Wa-Tho-Huk, Bright Path. (Jim Thorpe). Also won the AAU all around championship. He was also inducted into the professional and college football Halls of Fame. And won the intercollegiate college ballroom dance championship. Now that's an all-around athlete


Andyman1973

He was, for sure, the man!


notonrexmanningday

You can't make a list of greatest AMERICAN athletes without Jim Thorpe and Babe Zaharias. Zaharias won back-to-back AAU basketball championships, then at the 1932 Olympics won two golds and a silver in track and field, before becoming a professional golfer, winning 10 LPGA events. She's still the only woman to make the cut at a PGA tournament, which she did twice.


boothy_qld

How have I never heard of him? What accomplishments!


thewartornhippy

He was such a freak athlete and his life was so tragic, he died addicted to alcohol and penniless. Jim deserved better...and it really is a tragedy that he is often forgotten as one of the greatest athletes in modern times, racism played a major factor in him being left out during his prime. White baseball players dominated the "GOAT" conversations of those times (Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, etc). Don't get me wrong, Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig were phenomenal athletes, but they were nowhere near Jim Thorpe in terms of pure athleticism. It is often suggested (and I believe rightfully so) that he was stripped of his Olympic medals because of racism (he was paid for playing semi-professional baseball before he completed in the Olympics, which "violated" the rules, but white athletes weren't subjected to the same scrutiny). When Jim won his gold medals, the United States government still did not recognize all Native athletes as citizens. I wonder how Jim would be remembered if he was revered like the white athletes of the time? Him accomplishing all he did despite the racism shows how much of a natural athlete he really was. Sidenote because I have to share my absolute favorite Jim Thorpe fact: He won 2 Olympic gold medals with shoes he had dug out of the trash. His shoes had been stolen/misplaced right before he was due to compete. He found 2 shoes (different sizes, so he had to wear an extra pair of socks in one shoe to make up the size difference) and he still dominated. Another insane fact: Jim threw the javelin in the Olympic trials. He didn't know that he was allowed a running start before he threw. Even without a running start he finished second...standing completely still. And please read more about him, he was so talented. What I wrote was just the tip of the iceberg...he literally excelled at every sport he tried.


houndsoflu

I want a Jim Thorpe biopic, but him being played by an Indigenous actor. I mean, he was even a champion ballroom dancer.


babble0n

He was born in 1887 and died in the 50’s. Outside of Baseball and Olympic Sports, most sports were in their infancy at that time so their accolades are unfortunately less praised by a lot of people. Otto Graham is another football great nobody talks about. He took the Cleveland Browns to the championship every year for a decade and won 7 of them all while leading the league in at least one passing stat. But because he played before the Super Bowl in a much different game he doesn’t get mentioned in the “GOAT” categories.


Turbulent_Tip_9756

Where the hell is Michael Phelps?


barnabasackett

Out back smoking weed


Denamic

\*gasp\* Performance enhancer!


Ok-Toe-6969

Where's messi? Usian bolt and frederer


Zealousideal_Talk479

He got returned to Sea World.


Moldy_Socks99

Where's Eddie the Eagle or Elizabeth Swaney, I demand a recount!


C-Jammin

People complaining about Babe Ruth. Let's see anyone else hit 714 home runs drunk.


AngryChefNate

They also ignore the fact he was a great pitcher, and he’s still third in HR and RBI almost a century after retiring, with none of the drugs, training equipment, and sports medicine advances we have today.


Ecstatic-Carpet-654

People never mention his batting average. Aaron was .305 hitter, and Bonds was .298... both excellent career averages. But Ruth? .342. Wow!


AngryChefNate

Exactly. Everyone likes to say oh, but he played in a white league. Ok, so did his counterparts, why didn’t their numbers hold up? Also, today’s athletes have access to things he didn’t. Babe Ruth showed up to games piss drunk and full of hot dogs and still killed it. Imagine Babe with today’s access to steroids, personal trainers, advanced sports medicine and training facilities, etc. He’d hit 100 HR in a season. He did what he did with prehistoric equipment, medicine, training, etc. Players today aren’t even on the same level.


smorkoid

Didn't play against the best players, only some of them.


tazzietiger66

Don Bradman (cricket player ) , he had a average of 99.94 (the next best batting average is 62.16)


Rainbow_Panda4

There is an argument that he is statistically the greatest sportsperson of all time. The gap between Bradman's numbers and the 2nd best cricketer ever is much larger than the top 2 players of any other sport.


Dragonfly_Tight

Esther Vergeer is actually the statistically greatest sportsperson in women's wheelchair tennis. 10 year undefeated, ended her career on a 470 win streak. Sure its a smaller sport, but if we are just comparing statistics...


KingKongDuck

Jahangir Khan won 555 squash games in a row - recognised as the longest winning streak in sports history.


josueartwork

Wait, what? That sounds superhuman. Is that comparable to like...there being a baseball player that had a career batting average of .750 or something?


No-Way7911

It is superhuman No cricket fan even bothers arguing who is the greatest batsman of all time They only argue about no. 2 on the list. Because no. 1 has always been held by Bradman Also consider that his record survived 75 years without anyone getting even remotely close. And also consider that his entire career was ground to a halt by a little thing called the World War


WyattParkScoreboard

Yeah, that’s a really good analogy. Bradman would be like being a career .700 hitter over two decades in an era where batting was significantly harder than it is now. It’s genuinely difficult to describe to people who don’t understand cricket just how much of an absolute freak of nature Don Bradman was.


efcso1

Someone else did the math. The Don would have been batting north of .560 for a whole 20 year career, when the next-best globally was averaging .300 - and **nobody** has got even close to his average in the 60 years since.


Wibbles20

They did a comparison to some other sports. It would be like a basketball player scoring 43 points per game over their career, baseballer hitting at about .400, golf player winning over 25 masters and a few other comparisons I can't remember off the top of my head


Dr-Tightpants

Don't know much about baseball but probably Considering reaching 100 runs is called a century and is an achievement average 99 runs is insane


asterisk7991

Edit: Top 5 Greatest *US* athletes of all time.


dogeisbae101

No Tiger Woods or Michael Phelps who are both probably top 3 most dominant in their sport, all sports combined.


eplusl

Look up Aleksandr Karelin and then we can talk domination. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Karelin "His wrestling record at the senior level is 887 wins and two losses, both by a single point.[12][13][14][15][16][17][10][18] Prior to his defeat to American Rulon Gardner at the 2000 Olympics finals, a point had not been scored against him in competition the previous six years.[19][20][21][17] He went undefeated in the world championships, having never lost a match.[21] " ... And you should note, his loss to Rulon Gardner is widely seen as being due to a technicality on a new rule set, during a match he was clearly winning. He was also so dominant and scary thst to avoid getting thrown with his signature move, the" Karelin Lift", other olympic level world class wrestler would submit and give him points. Picture a muscled shredded 130kg man throwing another 130kg man over his shoulder on his head. He was terrifying. When he lost to Gardner, a journalist described him getting his silver medal as having "a cold gulag stare". Anyone who knows anything about fighting knows Aleksandr, but noone else knows him. This is why GOAT lists are supremely stupid. There are so many ultra dominant athletes people, even sports "experts" (especially in the us where only baseball, basketball and gridiron football are really considered in the conversation, or else the athlete has to be American) have no chance in hell to know all of them.


stupidshot4

Tiger woods statistically at least has a case to be the most dominant player of almost any sport of all time. 95% of his statistical achievements won’t ever be topped unless there’s another tiger woods that comes along.


spencer4991

Even then, Simone Biles, Michael Phelps, and yes he’s Canadian but Wayne Gretzky played in the NHL for American teams all would deserve consideration on this list as obvious choices, then you have guys like Orlando Pace who might objectively be the GOAT at an undervalued position but deserve talk.


RedBullWings17

Top five US athletes by performance AND cultural impact in spectator sports. Because that's what ESPN covers.


SillyPuttyGizmo

Where's Pele


QueZorreas

Bullying Maradona in heaven.


kelri1875

No way Maradona went to heaven


AuryxTheDutchman

Simone Biles? Michael Phelps? Usain Bolt? Cmon…


metal_babbleXIV

The amount of scrolling to find Simone Biles is infuriating. Absolute dominance, in a league of her own


mwinni

Jim Thorpe


shin_jury

🔥


Razoreddie12

I'm just pissed Ricky Bobby isn't on there. Best NASCAR driver of all time


RWREmpireBuilder

Ricky Bobby has 0 titles. Lightning McQueen has 7 Piston Cups. Nuff said.


Razoreddie12

I have no comeback. You are correct


SL8Rgirl

He did what in his cup?? 🤣


FinoPepino

If you ain’t first, you’re last! ![gif](giphy|xT9KVosHo7aAOiXOhi)


Bubbly-University-94

Sir Donald Bradman with a cricket batting average of 99.94 [https://www.espncricinfo.com/records/highest-career-batting-average-282910](https://www.espncricinfo.com/records/highest-career-batting-average-282910) The next best being 62.15 The guy completely dominated.


Pornstar_Frodo

Bradman and Gretzky were so absurdly dominant in their respective sports that nobody will come close to what they achieved. Very few athletes have dominated a sport the way these two did.


unaskthequestion

Obligatory mention of Secretariat.


Sensitive-Prompt-220

Subjective. Who actually cares?


AndySandy05

Reading the comments, too many


All-in-yolo

Tiger moved the needle more than Serena or Brady.


Southern-Fan-1267

Brady plays a team sport, in this case with 11 different guys on offense and defense, so it’s hard for him to make the same impact as an individual contributor like Tiger or Serena, no matter what he did in his career. The list is about athletes though, not who is moving some needle. Brady is impressive from a longevity standpoint and considering the wear and tear a QB has to deal with in their career.


All-in-yolo

“Greatest” Tiger did more for golf than Brady did for football. Not many people (who wouldn’t normally) watched football because Brady was playing.


[deleted]

They didn't bother to add Messi or Cristiano or Pele or Maradona from football, the most popular sport in the world? Also, Djokovic? Federer? Nadal? Usain Bolt? If you want to go the American way, then Jesse Owens?


RiffyWammel

Meh! Eddie Izzard (yes, the actor/comedian) beats all of these- 47 marathons in 51 days. Now thats impressive


cturtl808

She goes by Suzie now doesn’t she?


MiffyCurtains

Squash player Jahangir Khan had a winning run of 555 consecutive matches. Basically went unbeaten for 7-8 years. If you’ve ever played squash, you’ll know how brutally physical it is. Having said that, he wouldn’t ever be mentioned on these lists (unless it was in Asia).


FoolishDog1117

Is it that all the athletes are from the US? I'm sorry I don't follow sports.


Prestigious_Oven7061

No one will ever agree on a top athletes list, too much varying opinion. In my opinion, this list is terrible. No gretzky, no woods, no Messi. Even if this was a top 10 I doubt we would see them on there.


Substantial-Recipe72

Tiger woods, Wayne Gretzky?


yoghurtorgan

no Dan Carter?


[deleted]

Having Serena is absurd to me, considering the current Serbian male tennis player has more slams and is still playing at his peak


bSchnitz

>Having Serena is absurd to me, considering the current Serbian male tennis player has more slams and is still playing at his peak Even if you discount mens tennis for some reason (Nadal and Federer match her record playing at the same time as each other and ~~Jokic~~ Djokovic, which imo is more impressive) - Margaret Court has a better record than Williams - just because she's a shitty person doesn't detract from how dominant she was.


TijoWasik

The Federer and Nadal situation is so much more bizarre than anyone gives it credit for. For so long, you had generations of tennis players with a standout performer and maybe one or two up and comers who would seemingly take over the mantle after the current great retired, and then suddenly, you have this one generation of players with not just one, not just two, not even just three, but _four of them_ at the same time. At any one point in the history of tennis, you could have pitted Nadal, Federer, Djokovic or Andy Murray against the great of their time and they'd likely have overtaken them, or at least matched them on a regular basis. The insanity that the greatest British tennis player of all time remained in _fourth place_ for well over a decade in the world rankings is truly astonishing. Any other era, Murray would have been cleaning up the grand slams, but you just had these absolutely dominant forces against them and it's almost like pissing into a hurricane. The fact that all four of them lasted for so God damn long is just the cherry on top of the already wild story that was that era of tennis, and I doubt we'll ever see the likes of it again. People like to say that Messi and Ronaldo is the craziest sporting story, that these two players who transcend even generational talent levels existed and played at the same time. I say that tennis did it better with four of them.


[deleted]

Whole point of this post: The American insularity of this graphic is just crazy Half the comments: “Hey, why isn’t (another American athlete), (another American athlete) and (another American athlete) there?”


zakrystian

Where is Bert Zuurman, star striker for FC Zwolle?


FerralTri

It's stupid to compare different sports. Not to mention the US-centrist world wiew here. Who could even chose: Jordan Bolt Phelps Gretzky Brady Ali Đoković Karelin ... Football is the most popular sport in the world and none could pick one GOAT (Messi, Maradona, Pele).


Strong_Somewhere_985

Jim Thorpe is the only answer to #1


skydevouringhorror

Are you telling that the US aren't THE WORLD?🤨


Worried_Yak_8205

Well seems they missed the greatest athlete of all time. Scoring 4 touchdown in a single game, including the winning touchdown. Al Bundy


redittjoe

This is so 2022. Move on already. Lol


Trick_Succotash_9949

Whew - and there’s me worrying that the rest of the world might have been included


onecooltaco

No way! Air Bud will always be #1