He was the RINGS Open-weight Champion from 2001 to 2003, the PRIDE Heavyweight Champion from 2003 to 2007, and WAMMA Heavyweight Champion from 2008 to 2010, remaining undefeated for over 10 years in an incredible career in which he beat numerous champions and hall of fame fighters. Emelianenko is also the longest-reigning top-ranked pound-for-pound fighter in MMA history and was recently voted the greatest MMA fighter of all time with a whopping 73% of the votes in the biggest MMA online poll that ever took place in Brazil, the native country of the runner-up, Anderson Silva, a fact that indicates the global acceptance and respect Fedor enjoys from the fans. So the undisputed greatest cricketer of all time, Sir Don Bradman, played in fifty-two matches and batted in an incredible eighty innings, while a simple look at the list of cricketers with the best batting average in history shows that the far distant second cricketer has a career test batting average of 65.55% in just twenty-two innings. Bradman’s career test batting average of 99.94% is often claimed to be the greatest accomplishment by any sportsman in any major sport and is considered truly unbreakable. Ali is the most famous boxer of all time and one of the most famous athletes who ever lived regardless of sport. His colorful personality and struggle against racism and injustice gave him a heroic status and inspired many of his fellow African-American citizens to stand up and fight for their rights during an era of change. There’s no doubt that there have been many great boxers from antiquity to today and due to the many weight divisions it’s really hard to compare their skills and reign but there’s only one boxer who managed to become bigger than the sport itself and we all agree that this man is Muhammad Ali. During his career he won three Olympic gold medals, nine world championships in nine participations, and twelve European titles in twelve participations. He remained undefeated for over thirteen years, a mythic achievement, and six years without giving up a point, an even more mythic feat considering the nature of the sport. The Experiment’s wrestling record was 887 wins and only two losses, which he avenged. Shortly after his retirement in 2000, the International Federation of Associated Wrestling Styles named him the greatest wrestler of all time. Ruth has been named the greatest baseball player ever by the vast majority of surveys and polls with the most notable of all being conducted by The Sporting News in 1998, ranking him number one on the list of “Baseball’s 100 Greatest Players.” The following year he was named the greatest North American athlete of the twentieth century by the Associated Press’ list of the 100 greatest athletes of the century. Despite this sounding like an overstatement, Michael Jordan is the only basketball player in history to become bigger than the sport, a fact that no fan will ever deny. In 1999, he was named the greatest North American athlete of the twentieth century by ESPN ahead of other sports titans such as Muhammad Ali, Jim Thorpe, and Babe Ruth. Diego Armando Maradona gets the top spot on the list as the greatest athlete worldwide simply because he’s the king of the king of sports. He is the only man in the history of any team sport to win a World Cup almost by himself in 1986; he went to a minor league Italian team, Napoli, and a few years later led them to the Italian Championship twice and the UEFA European Cup, the only major titles in the club’s history; he scored the “goal of the century” and the most controversial as well (the “Hand of God”), both in the same game against England and was ultimately voted footballer of the century ahead of the likes of Pele, Zidane, Di Stefano, Cruyff, and Beckenbauer in the biggest Internet poll ever conducted for any sport by collecting an astonishing 55.60% of the people’s vote ahead of Pele, who got only a slim 18.53%. Do you agree that these are the greatest male athletes in history? Whether you do or don’t you should till check out these 25 Bizarre Sports You Probably Never Heard Of.
