Federer, Messi, Ronaldo, Mayweather, Bolt: 20 most dominant athletes since 2000

Roger Federer retiring from tennis yesterday afternoon got us thinking; who is the most dominant athlete since 2000?

Today, we’ll be looking at an article written by White Wolf Sports which analyses the most dominant athletes and their accomplishments. It was published back in 2018, but let’s be honest, no one would have entered this list over the past four years.

Many professional athletes across all sports have put their mark on their respective fields, courts, tracks and just about any other sporting environment you can think of since 2000.

Coming in at number 20, it is the late and very great Kobe Bryant. “The Black Mamba” alongside Shaquille O’Neal won three NBA championships in a row from 2000 to 2002 and was an 11-time First Team All-NBA player.

At number 19 is another former NBA player in Tim Duncan. The five-time NBA champion was a force to be reckoned with both offensively and defensively in his career at the centre position.

Sitting in the number 18 spot we have a titan of tennis in Novak Djokovic, who has been one of the sport’s most impactful players in recent years after winning many major honours.

We decided to combine 16 and 15 as they both come from the same sport, where we have arguably football’s greatest ever players in Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, respectively.

We’re going to shorten the remainder of this list in clusters, with the name of the athlete and their sport and/or associated league in brackets to get this moving along a bit further until we get to the top five.

At numbers 14-11, we have Jimmie Johnson (NASCAR), Mike Trout (baseball), Peyton Manning (NFL) and Albert Pujols (baseball).

Coming in at numbers 10-6, we have Rafael Nadal (tennis), LeBron James (NBA), Barry Bonds