Hey thanks! What a cool thing to read. 
Although this question always reads a bit like âWhich wave in the ocean is best?â
Theyâre all connected.
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+1 for humility. Looks like your lead just got a little longer. Lol.
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Bro, I deserve no place in any âbest ofâ list.
@edhaponik is totally a valuable figure for a lot of things, fixed axle play being one of the most prominent.
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Itâs Jensen Kimmit
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Youâre def. the best Iâve seen in terms of doing 1A tricks on fixies.
Ed is somebody whoâs very good at Fixie tricks that utilize the response, like stalls and suicide variations.
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Kieren Cooper is goat
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Whoâs the GOAT?
- Hiroyuki Suzuki
- Shinji Saito
- Takeshi Matsuura
- Hajime Miura
- Shu Takada
- Rei Iwakura
- Other
0
voters
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Coming back from the general yoyo thougts thread, i think this question is a bit silly and was just an excuse for Evan to talk about who he respects the most, not actually a statement of who is the GOAT of yoyoing. I think such a title canât be awarded in an activity/sport/hobby that has so many creative outlets such as yoyoing. If we were to really give an objective answer to this, Iâm in favor of categorizing.
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The problem with this poll is that all the answers are correct in a sense.
I have a bigger issue with the OAT part. It requires comparing competitors from wildly different eras, which makes no sense. Thereâs no clear way to âadjust for (competitive) inflationâ.
Ok well the greatest right now is Hajime. I feel like thatâs not even a discussion, unlike with GOAT
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I think youâre focusing too much on the âGOATâ part and not enough on the âWho do you thinkâŚâ part. Itâs just a question about your preference.
If I had to pick one person I would say Charles Haycock. Love the way he puts combos together, he has a really unique approach to trick construction and I always enjoy watching what he comes up with.
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Fair enough.
I just know that in the sports world, discussing âthe GOATâ usually leads away from the elusive nature of personal preference and towards in-depth discussions about performance statistics, what they measure, how effective they are at measuring what they claim to measure, whether it is possible to compare stats from wildly different eras, which stats to give more weight when determining the GOAT, etc.
If all you want to do is ask âWho do you like the most?â then the term GOAT should probably be removed since that term naturally provokes a much deeper discussion.
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Well⌠You can think X and someone else can think Y, it doesnât really matter. Thereâs no wrong answer to a âWhat do you thinkâŚâ style question. So⌠Who do you think is the GOAT?
Iâd have to study the WYYC stats more closely⌠
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Even if youâre studying WYYC stats very carefully, youâre only learning who someone ELSE thinks is the best through the prism of selected subjective criteria. The World YoYo Contest (and every yoyo contest) decides who is CHAMPION - not whoâs best. âBeating the gameâ in yo-yoing relies on both winning the executed routine AND in winning the judgesâ perception of the routine. As weâve seen, a player can do everything right, but ultimately the championship is AWARDED.
I think we try to make yo-yoing a sport because weâre afraid people wonât care about it, but the sport we made up wonât provide much solid data for this kind of purpose. I mean we can measure the baskets a player makes over a career and identify the greatest NBA scorers quantifiably, then subjectively discuss their significance with their peers across different eras. Same with ERA in baseball or rushing yards in football, 100m freestyle times are even more cut and dry⌠But even in those contexts, youâd be hard-pressed to present quantifiable evidence for a universally accepted âGOATâ, let alone in yo-yoing where the rational basis for even judging players against their contemporaries is so limited.
The idea of trying to apply such a thing to yo-yoing sounds about like trying to use commuter perception data to choose a GOAT graffiti artist or taste-test data for a GOAT croissant baker. Itâs trying to apply a rational means of quantification to a thing which has no quantity. This will never yield a better answer than âhereâs who I find most relevant/importantâ.
And by this, (sorry totally TL;DR) Iâm not suggesting that this conversation is in any way a waste of time. I think itâs fun and thought-provoking to debate the impact of a Mickey compared with a Gentry or a Barney⌠like Root said, the fun part is the justification.
For my money, Steve Brown is waaaaaaay up there. His combination of raw creativity, innovation, performance, players heâs inspired PLUS a huge appreciation/knowledge for yo-yo trick history puts him in some pretty rarefied air.
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While all true, I donât find it helpful to me to just go on some gut instinct. Mostly because I lack the necessary experience to make a credible choice. Therefore I turn to something more concrete: performance stats.
Gymnastics faces a similar issue. If you look at gymnastic scores they are determined in exactly the same manner as yoyo scores. In effect, Olympic medals are awarded to gymnasts every bit as much as yoyo championships are awarded to yoyoers. But in the absence of any other concrete data, thatâs what we (well, I) have to go with.
I am willing to accept that a competitor who has won titles across numerous years, succeeding as an elite player despite changing rules and scoring meta, as a legitimate contender for the GOAT. Iâm not going to look at nebulous concepts like âimpactâ or âinfluenceâ because that canât be quantified in any way that I know of. Even signature yoyo sales (a hard number) really only tells us who is popular, not necessarily who exhibits the most skill.
So yes, Iâm fine with the notion that the GOAT is the âbest competitorâ rather than the âbest yoyoerâ, simply because I see no other credible way to determine the latter, at least not for myself.
Gotta disagree vehemently on gymnastics comparison.
Gymnastics competitors are NOT just doing a free-for-all over 3 minutes on stage. They are executing pre-determined techniques on the various apparatuses - every commentator and every judge knows the value of the executed techniques and the relevant deductions, along with what the competitor is going to try to do. This is even true on the most âfreeâ apparatus, the floor. Thatâs why the commentators can immediately say "oh that was a 0.2 deduction and predict results with FAR more accuracy than would be plausible in yo-yo. In the old days when we did compulsory tricks to get to the freestyles, THAT could be compared to modern gymnastics (or diving, ice skating, etc). But to suggest that watching Evan or Hajime reveal tricks (many for the first time) in real time and accurately score them in context with those of other competitors is in any way analogous to that kind of rigidity is erroneous.
And thank god, because who would want to watch the most exciting yo-yoers in the world go through the motions on a bunch of pre-determined tricks?
edit: And I think itâs fine to select the GOAT by any criteria you want (or feel youâre able to use), as long as you know what youâre using and why.
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I thought this was true for yoyo judging as well. How else do judges award clicks? How could they possible assign a final score if they didnât know the value of the executed techniques and the relevant deductions? If they donât know these things, then maybe they shouldnât be judging. If youâre saying that there isnât enough of a standard consensus on clicks and deductions, then maybe the scoring system is perilously flawed and should be completely re-evaluated.
From the various YouTube and Instagram videos Iâve seen of the elite players who compete at the highest level, there appears to be a very high correlation between unbound skill (i.e., skill not tied to the specific needs of winning a competition based on what tricks score the best) and competition skill. That correlation appears high enough to me to use competition scoring as the benchmark for determining the GOAT. There is no other formalized system that is better for this purpose (that I know of).
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Hereâs the rules for the championship division.
http://iyyf.org/wyyc2019-rules/freestyle-rules-2019/
Nowhere do they (nor COULD they possibly) outline anything approaching the gamut of trick elements performed, and even less could they put them in contexts with other elements. Itâs on each judge to maintain an objective standard for the value of a sideways âgt suicideâ vs a âtower lacerationâ. If such standards existed, who could possibly keep them all straight in real time? I mean I love Dazzling Dave, but cmon. We do our best.
Iâve judged at every level, and organizers (especially at Worlds) do their best to work with a flawed system and to maintain a high standard of understanding of the rules. But thereâs no way a judge with no sense of whatâs coming can dot every i and cross every t in the way a gymnastics judge can determine whether a flip with a 1.5 twist was performed (as expected) and that they landed straight with their feet together.
Itâs not the same. It doesnât make either of them less valuable, and competition is a perfectly valid line to use in judging GOAT - just no more so than any other subjective line (IMO).
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