A long-delayed top five... about sports
Now, it's well documented that Sollosi loves both sports and trivia, so naturally I also love sports trivia. And, just like any trivia enthusiast, I take particular delight in knowing a tasty piece of trivia that has serious "impact" (whether it entails strong cultural relevance, a particularly surprising statistic, or what have you). Now here I'll give you five of the greatest, most dominant athletes of all time, but you probably haven't heard of any of them. This could be because they play in a niche sport, or are particularly overlooked within their own sport, but they are unquestionably among the greatest athletes of all time. Just read the list below and try to see how many you recognize.
Now, I'm not giving order to this list, except maybe the last one (which I feel is a "number one" of sorts). It isn't fair to compare individuals in such widely different sports, so I'm going to avoid assigning direct rankings and just list these five legends without any numbers. Except for the last one, because he's number one.
Ferenc Puskas (Hungarian footballer)
Ferenc Puskas was short and pudgy for a footballer (about 5'9", around 190 pounds) and never won a World Cup. But he was also the team captain for the most dominant national side of all time and was a prolific scorer in the Hungarian league for many years and for Real Madrid in their "golden age" of the 1960s. Not very quick and exclusively left-footed (both usually very bad traits in a footballer), Puskas nevertheless scored in bunches and bunches, recording four hat-tricks in his first year with Madrid, despite being on the older side at 31 years. The 1952 and 1954 Hungarian sides are the two highest-rated teams of all time using the mathematical Elo football ranking system. If that weren't enough, England's worst defeat of all time was a 7-1 loss to the Magical Magyars of the 1950s, which remained undefeated for a four-year period from 1950 to 1954, losing only in the 1954 World Cup to West Germany thanks to some scandalously biased calls. And still, very few people, even including serious international football fans, remember Puskas's accomplishments. For that reason, Puskas remains one of the all-time best obscure athletes. (And yes, I didn't say the "s-word" even though I use that word all the time normally; I'm just trying to sound like a snotty European I guess).
Karch Kiraly (American volleyball player)
Kiraly was incredibly dominant in college, an All-American for all four years of his career and leading UCLA to two undefeated seasons and three NCAA championships. On the international scene, he won three gold medals, two for indoor volleyball and one for beach volleyball in the three Olympic Games that he participated in. He's widely considered the greatest volleyball player of all time, but it's his most recent accomplishments that really blow my mind. Now, Kiraly retired last summer, at age 41. That's really old for an active sport like volleyball. But still, at age 41, he was still the best defensive player in the world, leading the American scene in digs and saves, which is perhaps equivalent to a 41-year-old basketball player leading the NBA in blocks and rebounds. Now we're entering the realm of the ridiculous. Not only did he dominate the world in his prime, but he was still among leaders in some pretty rough stats going into his 40s. Now that's the difference between sports success and sports immortality - playing on a beyond-elite level for decades rather than mere years. For those reasons, Kiraly is one of the best.
Jahangir Khan (Pakistani squash player)
Now, I'm no squash expert (from my understanding, it's basically raquetball with faster drives and slower rebounds, sort of like comparing tennis to badminton), but I know an all-time great when I see one. Now, Squash has two international championship events - the World Open and the English Open, which are probably analogous to the four tennis Grand Slam events or the four Majors of the PGA Tour. Over a 13-year career Khan won the World Open six times and the English Open for ten straight years. Ten motherfuckin' years. Has any tennis player or golf player won one of those events every year for ten years? Not even close. Somewhere in that run Khan also had a 5-year undefeated span, and "undefeated for five straight years" is a pretty fantastic stat for just about any sport. In the twilight of his career, Khan was overshadowed by his distant relative Jansher Khan, who is usually considered the second-greatest squash player of all time, with fourteen championships to the older Khan's sixteen, but with nothing like those ten straight English Opens to really widen the eyes. Jahangir Khan, for utter dominance of a niche sport, fits this list of mine perfectly.
Alexander Karelin (Russian wrestler)
Now, this guy is probably the most famous of the five on this list, but due to losing rather than winning. Karelin was upset by American Rulon Gardner in the 2000 Olympic games, despite having lost no matches in international competition in the past 13 years, and not even giving up a point in the last 6 of those 13. Again, even if you don't understand wrestling much, it's easy to tell that is very, very good. Nicknamed "The Experiment" (one of my favorite nicknames of any athlete), his incredible shoulder throws of 300+ pound men seem like the kind of thing you'd see in American show-wrestling matches. That one silver medal after three straight golds in the Olympics might taint his legacy a bit, but this guy's size (286 pounds), speed (way too fuckin' fast for someone weighing 286 pounds), and remarkable intelligence (he has a Ph.D is phys. Ed) made for one of the most dominant and terrifying athletes in recent memory.
1. Sir Don Bradman (Australian cricket batsman)
Let's play a stats game again. In cricket, the "batting average" statistic is the number of runs scored divided by the number of outs for a batsman. An average of around 40-50 is a very good score, equivalent to a baseball batting average of around .320 or so. If your career average is 50 or above, then that is a damn impressive accomplishment. The second-highest all-time career average is 60.97, by R.G. Pollock. Don Bradman's career average is the highest, at an absurd 99.94. That means, for every time he's ever struck out or been tagged out (in cricket's version of those terms), he has scored a hundred bases. This is equivalent to a career batting average of over .400, or an OPS of around 1.8. It's insane to think of anyone making equivalent career numbers that high in any sport. For his 20 years with the Australian national team, Bradman was the most dominating player in cricket history, and makes a case to be the most dominant player in the history of sports. But come on, how many American sports fans have ever heard of him? Didn't think so.
So that's that. Recognize any of those names? If you did, congratulations. If you didn't, well, now my brain is that much happier for enlightening you about these five greats. That feeling comes with the trivia obsession.
Now, I'm not giving order to this list, except maybe the last one (which I feel is a "number one" of sorts). It isn't fair to compare individuals in such widely different sports, so I'm going to avoid assigning direct rankings and just list these five legends without any numbers. Except for the last one, because he's number one.
Ferenc Puskas (Hungarian footballer)
Ferenc Puskas was short and pudgy for a footballer (about 5'9", around 190 pounds) and never won a World Cup. But he was also the team captain for the most dominant national side of all time and was a prolific scorer in the Hungarian league for many years and for Real Madrid in their "golden age" of the 1960s. Not very quick and exclusively left-footed (both usually very bad traits in a footballer), Puskas nevertheless scored in bunches and bunches, recording four hat-tricks in his first year with Madrid, despite being on the older side at 31 years. The 1952 and 1954 Hungarian sides are the two highest-rated teams of all time using the mathematical Elo football ranking system. If that weren't enough, England's worst defeat of all time was a 7-1 loss to the Magical Magyars of the 1950s, which remained undefeated for a four-year period from 1950 to 1954, losing only in the 1954 World Cup to West Germany thanks to some scandalously biased calls. And still, very few people, even including serious international football fans, remember Puskas's accomplishments. For that reason, Puskas remains one of the all-time best obscure athletes. (And yes, I didn't say the "s-word" even though I use that word all the time normally; I'm just trying to sound like a snotty European I guess).
Karch Kiraly (American volleyball player)
Kiraly was incredibly dominant in college, an All-American for all four years of his career and leading UCLA to two undefeated seasons and three NCAA championships. On the international scene, he won three gold medals, two for indoor volleyball and one for beach volleyball in the three Olympic Games that he participated in. He's widely considered the greatest volleyball player of all time, but it's his most recent accomplishments that really blow my mind. Now, Kiraly retired last summer, at age 41. That's really old for an active sport like volleyball. But still, at age 41, he was still the best defensive player in the world, leading the American scene in digs and saves, which is perhaps equivalent to a 41-year-old basketball player leading the NBA in blocks and rebounds. Now we're entering the realm of the ridiculous. Not only did he dominate the world in his prime, but he was still among leaders in some pretty rough stats going into his 40s. Now that's the difference between sports success and sports immortality - playing on a beyond-elite level for decades rather than mere years. For those reasons, Kiraly is one of the best.
Jahangir Khan (Pakistani squash player)
Now, I'm no squash expert (from my understanding, it's basically raquetball with faster drives and slower rebounds, sort of like comparing tennis to badminton), but I know an all-time great when I see one. Now, Squash has two international championship events - the World Open and the English Open, which are probably analogous to the four tennis Grand Slam events or the four Majors of the PGA Tour. Over a 13-year career Khan won the World Open six times and the English Open for ten straight years. Ten motherfuckin' years. Has any tennis player or golf player won one of those events every year for ten years? Not even close. Somewhere in that run Khan also had a 5-year undefeated span, and "undefeated for five straight years" is a pretty fantastic stat for just about any sport. In the twilight of his career, Khan was overshadowed by his distant relative Jansher Khan, who is usually considered the second-greatest squash player of all time, with fourteen championships to the older Khan's sixteen, but with nothing like those ten straight English Opens to really widen the eyes. Jahangir Khan, for utter dominance of a niche sport, fits this list of mine perfectly.
Alexander Karelin (Russian wrestler)
Now, this guy is probably the most famous of the five on this list, but due to losing rather than winning. Karelin was upset by American Rulon Gardner in the 2000 Olympic games, despite having lost no matches in international competition in the past 13 years, and not even giving up a point in the last 6 of those 13. Again, even if you don't understand wrestling much, it's easy to tell that is very, very good. Nicknamed "The Experiment" (one of my favorite nicknames of any athlete), his incredible shoulder throws of 300+ pound men seem like the kind of thing you'd see in American show-wrestling matches. That one silver medal after three straight golds in the Olympics might taint his legacy a bit, but this guy's size (286 pounds), speed (way too fuckin' fast for someone weighing 286 pounds), and remarkable intelligence (he has a Ph.D is phys. Ed) made for one of the most dominant and terrifying athletes in recent memory.
1. Sir Don Bradman (Australian cricket batsman)
Let's play a stats game again. In cricket, the "batting average" statistic is the number of runs scored divided by the number of outs for a batsman. An average of around 40-50 is a very good score, equivalent to a baseball batting average of around .320 or so. If your career average is 50 or above, then that is a damn impressive accomplishment. The second-highest all-time career average is 60.97, by R.G. Pollock. Don Bradman's career average is the highest, at an absurd 99.94. That means, for every time he's ever struck out or been tagged out (in cricket's version of those terms), he has scored a hundred bases. This is equivalent to a career batting average of over .400, or an OPS of around 1.8. It's insane to think of anyone making equivalent career numbers that high in any sport. For his 20 years with the Australian national team, Bradman was the most dominating player in cricket history, and makes a case to be the most dominant player in the history of sports. But come on, how many American sports fans have ever heard of him? Didn't think so.
So that's that. Recognize any of those names? If you did, congratulations. If you didn't, well, now my brain is that much happier for enlightening you about these five greats. That feeling comes with the trivia obsession.