Most dominant athlete of all-time?

Edwin Moses 1977-1987.

If you don't like that, then try Muhammad Ali 1960-1977.

Felix does not belong on the list.

Alexsandr Karelin. Hands down. Discussion over.

Career: 887-2, losing once early in his career and his last match ever. 13 straight years undefeated.

Need I say more?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Karelin

Aleksandr Karelin in Greco-Roman wrestling. A career record of 887-2, with 3 Olympic golds and a silver, 9 World and 12 European championships.

The Experiment wrote:

Alexsandr Karelin. Hands down. Discussion over.

Career: 887-2, losing once early in his career and his last match ever. 13 straight years undefeated.

Need I say more?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Karelin

Would have to agree with this. It says he didn’t get a SINGLE POINT score do on him for SIX YEARS. What the hell

Side note: this guy was 100% on drugs. If Russia was doping in 2014 you can bet your butt they were seriously doping athletes in the 90s.

except no real athletes do wrestling as a sport.

all-time? you mean post-modern all-time or all-time all-time?

If you mean the latter then Gaius Appuleius Diocles. He was comparatively richer than tiger woods in his day!

Karelin was a freak of nature and most probably completely clean. His training was insane.

Julio Cesar Chavez

Ed Moses

chunk1 wrote:

http://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/22765432/tiger-woods-lebron-james-most-dominant-athletes-last-20-years

Felix does not belong on the list.

There's a few non-Americans on that list to give the impression that it is an international list. It's a good page, but a hotchpotch of a list.

Seven American athletes from traditional North American sports of baseball, basketball, American football, NASCAR. People around the world may have heard of some of those seven names because they have been successfully marketed by global sports companies, but most won't have even seen them compete.

If the Djokovic goes in ahead of more decorated Nadal by virtue of a five-year hot streak within Djokovic's career, then Mo's ten consecutive global track distance golds over six years beats them both.

compressed wrote:

Edwin Moses 1977-1987.

If you don't like that, then try Muhammad Ali 1960-1977.

Ali? I don't think so. When he fought Liston the first time he was a massive underdog. When he fought George Foreman he wasn't given a chance.

Does that sound like a dominant athlete.

Sir Donald Bradman

Blinky Bill wrote:

Sir Donald Bradman

Cricket. The most boring sport of all time, popular only in England and former English possessions not named USA.

For the list to even be debatable I think it has to be territory specific and you get more credit for being in a sport that is more visible than another. Sports like Cricket and Greco-Roman Wrestling are basically non-entities in the USA. I'd put soccer on that list too, but it does have a following and many school kids play it.

Considering the above, Tiger Woods fits the bill for me. World wide sport for maximum competition, highly visible sport in the USA, and until his cheating scandal, was clearly the best ever.

Heather Mackay from Wiki:

When she retired in 1981 at the age of 40, McKay had gone nearly 20 years undefeated (with the only two defeats to her name occurring at the beginning of her career). Her first defeat was in the quarterfinal of the New South Wales Championship in 1960 losing to Yvonne West and her second defeat was in the final of the Scottish Open in 1962 losing in straight games to Fran Marshall.

McKay won her first British Open (considered to be the effective world championship of the sport at the time) in 1962. She then won it again every year for the next 15 consecutive years, losing only two games at the championship during that time. She usually won her finals matches comfortably. In the 1968 championship, she won the final against her compatriot Bev Johnson without dropping a point.

Kelso. Horse of the year five years in a row from 1960-1964. Absolute beast. Literally.

Holy hell wrote:

The Experiment wrote:

Alexsandr Karelin. Hands down. Discussion over.

Career: 887-2, losing once early in his career and his last match ever. 13 straight years undefeated.

Need I say more?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Karelin

Would have to agree with this. It says he didn’t get a SINGLE POINT score do on him for SIX YEARS. What the hell

Side note: this guy was 100% on drugs. If Russia was doping in 2014 you can bet your butt they were seriously doping athletes in the 90s.

Actually 1990s Russia would be the decade out of the last 100 years that it's most likely they wouldn't be doping, or at least not state sponsored doping. The government, and society, was in a complete mess. Karelin probably did dope, I guess, just like all the top American amateur wrestlers dope. Some sports have doping cultures where it's not considered cheating to dope (amongst the athletes anyway). Cycling has historically been one, and so has wrestling. Sprinting has been like that for decades, and distance running developed it in the 90s with EPO.

We had to get this far before someone mentions Wayne Gretzky???

The Experiment wrote:

Alexsandr Karelin. Hands down. Discussion over.

Career: 887-2, losing once early in his career and his last match ever. 13 straight years undefeated.

Need I say more?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Karelin

You beat me to it. Good choice.