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Notes -
I think the hopper concept is a good way to approach the question of who is the fittest on a theoretical "neutral ground." Otherwise comparing across disciplines is all about home field advantage. Competitive high level CrossFit is a moderately interesting answer, though over time the moves have gotten more specialized and it's more about training for CrossFit than training for anything.
FWIW, the most interesting answer to "the fittest" in my mind is probably MMA competition, in that within a weight class the fighter is always operating at the frontier of trading off strength vs endurance while accounting for his opponent doing the same. Too much focus on maximum strength, you gas early if you don't finish your opponent early, like Shane Carwin taking on Brock Lesnar; but if your maximum strength level is too much lower than your opponent's he'll overpower you and finish you off before endurance ever comes into play, like Shane Carwin's opponents leading up to his title shot.
And I suppose part of the reason I find this balance compelling is because by high school I had to come to the conclusion I am an athletic mediocrity, I was never going to do anything good enough to be interesting in any particular field. So given that, I find it more personally satisfying to have good lifts and decent cardio, than to have slightly better mediocre lifts and no cardio or slightly better mediocre cardio and weak lifts.
There's a certain primal appeal to fighting, absolutely, but I also feel like combat sports s&c is pretty unsophisticated or downright goofy compared to more specialized events because, well, perfectly optimized s&c isn't all that important relative to skills training.
Oh, sure, me too, and ultimately pretty similar logic re:specialization, I just think the many variations on "but what's his Fran time?" (perhaps more prevalent: "I would never want to look like that") are generally contemptible.
More generally, it occurs to me that the word "fit" by its etymology and other meanings pretty strongly implies specificity--fit for something or other. I don't know how many people this will convince, but it certainly makes me look on the concept of "general fitness" with a good deal of suspicion.
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