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That's why I brought up Topuria specifically, because he is in a smaller weightclass on a UFC scale, but at his walking around weight he is essentially an average American male. In my view, that makes him objectively athletic, because he's outperforming the majority of men. And the market agrees! The most famous UFC fighters of all time are Connor Macgregor and GSP, who fought primarily at 155 and 170 respectively. The highest earning divisions have historically been between 155 and 205, rarely above or below. There's a deeper and more interesting talent pool that puts on good fights.
The assertion regarding lower-weightclass athletes or female athletes that:
Is the purest fentanyl-strength copium. I know a few dozens of women that climb 5.13b, that's not a trivial achievement for a man. Neither is a 3:13 marathon, or sinking three pointers, or playing scratch golf even from the women's tees, or any number of other female athletic achievements we see.
Really, I agree with you that athletics is about status, but I don't think the adverb "objective" belongs anywhere near the adjective athletic. Because there is no being "athletic" in some platonic ideal sense, there is only being more athletic than and less athletic than. And the question as to calling someone athletic when we get into weight classes, women's divisions, "master's" age classes, is probably whether such people are either "more athletic than the average person" or "more athletic than the expectation."
So I guess the status I'm interested in conferring on others when I call them athletic is that they are more athletic than you'd expect.
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