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Gomi and Kid are the only two to truly establish dominance in a division outright. Outside of them there are a few greats who just missed out on that sort of rep.
Sakurai was a force at 170lbs early but got his jets cooled by Anderson and then dominated/mugged by Matt Hughes. Since then he's either been hit and miss.
Kiyoshi Tamura was a beast in the first half of his career and can make a good case for being a dominant fighter during this time but he did start out in an org which limited alot of what we see today in MMA and once he made the change the holes started to appear which led to alot of losses.
Rumina Sato was a beast early in his career and looked to be the guy who would rule 155lbs until he ran into a bit of an inconsistent form in 1998 and 2000 starting with Gerson and ending with Uno stopping him twice. Ever since then he was never the same.
Sakuraba was a great fighter, an ATG and a favourite of mine, but he never settled on a division to establish dominance. His claim to fame is being the Gracie hunter, but essentially he beat a bunch of one dimensional fighters 3 of which (Renzo, Royler and Royce) were smaller than him. By the time he had settled at the PRIDE MW division he was pretty battleworn and Wanderlei Silva had just come into his own.
Sakurai was a force at 170lbs early but got his jets cooled by Anderson and then dominated/mugged by Matt Hughes. Since then he's either been hit and miss.
Kiyoshi Tamura was a beast in the first half of his career and can make a good case for being a dominant fighter during this time but he did start out in an org which limited alot of what we see today in MMA and once he made the change the holes started to appear which led to alot of losses.
Rumina Sato was a beast early in his career and looked to be the guy who would rule 155lbs until he ran into a bit of an inconsistent form in 1998 and 2000 starting with Gerson and ending with Uno stopping him twice. Ever since then he was never the same.
Sakuraba was a great fighter, an ATG and a favourite of mine, but he never settled on a division to establish dominance. His claim to fame is being the Gracie hunter, but essentially he beat a bunch of one dimensional fighters 3 of which (Renzo, Royler and Royce) were smaller than him. By the time he had settled at the PRIDE MW division he was pretty battleworn and Wanderlei Silva had just come into his own.
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