He kept on progressing from his early days at FW where he lost against great names (KZ, Cub, Conor) and won against others (Holloway).
He went up a class a collected the scalps of Gaethje, Alvarez, Holloway, Conor, Hooker, Pettis, Chandler..
In a historically deep division, he showed durability, persistence, and regularity. He's still keeping young prospects from getting near that belt.
He's a great boxer, maybe the greatest of the division, he has deceptive cardio, not that easy to take down, he's a fricking dog and he's a danger from round 1 to the end of round 5. You can never count him off and that's why i'm fine with him skipping Charles and Gaethje for another TS
Maybe top 5 LW all time, but for sure a JBG all time candidate and a fan pleaser !
Top 5 LW all time is ridiculous -- he never won the title. There are 4 LW champions alone in history with 3 title defenses, which means he'd have to be better than every UFC LW champion ever that didn't defend 3 times.
How is Dustin better than Khabib, BJ, Frankie, and Benson with 3 title defenses?!
This also means he'd have to be ranked higher than Islam, who has 2 title defenses against prime Volk, who is obviously better as a W than Max Holloway or
any of Dustin's wins.
How is he ranked higher than islam who won the title and defended twice?
Pettis won and defended the UFC LW strap. Dustin beat Pettis (30) in 2017, it was Pettis' 27th professional fight in 10 years. From 2015-2019 Anthony Pettis was 4-7. He lost to Dustin in the middle of the worst five year span of his career.
Would you really rank Dustin higher than Pettis because of his victory over him when he was obviously already washed?
Conor beat Dustin at FW, won the title, went to LW and won that title too, so there's an argument there on who's above who there since Conor peaked far higher. There's legit arguments to be had on both sides of that one, imho, but I take Dustin. But, to be fair: Dustin beat Conor in 2021. Conor beat Alvarez in 2016, didn't fight in 2017, lost to Khabib in 2018, didn't fight in 2019, beat Cerrone in 2020 and then lost to Dustin x2 in 2021, so in his last 7 fights he's 3-4 and, well, is Conor.
Charles
beat and finished Dustin in Olive's 41st professional fight and Dustin's 36th. Charles won the title and defended the title
against Dustin for fucks sake. He has the most finishes in UFC history.
How is Dustin ranked higher than Charles?!
Dustin beat Alvarez (34) in 2018. Eddie was in his 36th professional MMA fight in 15 years. Eddie was 4-4-2 in his last 10 professional fights spanning from 2016-2021. Dustin was directly in the middle (6th) of that 10 fight span.
Sean Sherk won and defended the strap. Dude's a pioneer and was like 36-4 as a midget.
He had great wins against featherweight Max (still a great W) and Justin 1.0. He beat Jim Miller, Bobby Green, and Dan Hooker. Okay?
His losses aren't bad at all. Khabib, Charles, Justin 2.0, Michael Johnson, prime Conor.
All this book to say: Dustin has some serious stat padding for his W's over Pettis, Conor and Alvarez. He has never beaten anyone in their prime outside of Max and Justin (who smoked him in the rematch). Any time he sniffs a title fight he gets finished.
Sorry for the novella, but if you said "man he may be the 10th best LW of all time" I'm intrigued. When you say 5th you completely ignore the entire history of the UFC prior to 2018 which is ridiculous.
