Firas Zahabi: GSP is ‘no doubt’ the greatest fighter of all-time, followed by Demetrious Johnson

One of the more popular debates in MMA is “Who is the greatest fighter of all-time?”

The fighters in that “GOAT” discussion usually include Georges St-Pierre, Demetrious Johnson, Fedor Emelianenko, Jon Jones, and Anderson Silva. Strength of opponent, numer of successful title defenses, success in multiple weight classes, and clean drug testing history are among the criteria used when ranking the legends of the sport. For longtime trainer Firas Zahabi, he believes there’s a clear #1 without question, and that’s GSP.

“He’s No. 1, no doubt about it,” said Zahabi (transcript via MMA Fighting). “Who else could there be? Give me a name.

“Conor [McGregor] hasn’t defended a title. [Fedor] had too many losses. [Anderson] had too many losses and you know what happened. The testing didn’t go well. [Jon] – testing. There’s nobody else! There’s nobody else. I’m not just saying that because I train him. Put me aside, the guy is the greatest martial artist of all-time. That’s it. He did it. Let’s give him his due props. He worked for it, he deserves it. If another name comes along that does more than what he did, I’ll be happy to say that there’s a new best of all time.

“Before the testing, and all the losses happened, I would say he was one of the best of all time. Now I’m telling you he is THE best of all time. That’s just the way it is. After the tests come back the way they did the losses happened the way they did, the hands were dealt the way they were, now the best of all time, today, is GSP. No doubt about it.”

St-Pierre (26-2) is considered at the very minimum to be the greatest welterweight of all-time. After stepping away from the sport and giving up his title in late 2013, he returned to the Octagon last November after four years away from competition, submitting then-champion Michael Bisping to win the UFC middleweight title. The only two losses of his career were to Matt Hughes and Matt Serra, and he avenged them both, with Hughes getting stopped twice and Serra once.

Zahabi obviously has coached GSP for years, so you may be inclined to believe that he’s slightly biased in his opinion. Now if you want to know his opinion on who the runner-up would be in the “GOAT” rankings, it’s the current #1 pound-for-pound fighter in the world and only flyweight champion in UFC history.

“Demetrious Johnson is No. 2 in my opinion,” said Zahabi. “Absolutely. The only reason I wouldn’t give it to Demetrious – and I think the world of Demetrious, I can’t say enough good things about him – he didn’t have the hornets nest, the challengers thatGeorges had. He just didn’t have those legendary guys that went on a win streak, that were unstoppable, and then were stopped by the champ. He didn’t have that. And it’s not his fault. It’s not his fault at all. He took down everybody they put in front of him and he did it in style; however, he never had that guy.

“The division is not that deep. There’s not that many people, per capita, that weigh 125 pounds, that can make that weight class. There’s not that many people in the population. How many of those guys were studs that haven’t lost in 10 years like a Jake Shields, Matt Hughes, so many guys, legends that Georges beat. Also, he didn’t win the championship in a weight class above.”

Neither GSP nor DJ is scheduled to fight at this moment. St-Pierre vacated the middleweight title shortly after beating Bisping, and his ongoing battle with ulcerative colitis has sidelined him indefinitely. As for Johnson, he is recovering from injury and is likely to rematch Henry Cejudo upon return, as a proposed superfight with bantamweight champion T.J. Dillashaw is currently off the table.

You can watch Zahabi’s full interview with Fight Hub TV at the top of the page.