Strength of Division

[Breaking]

How do people make their assessments of the overall strength of a division?

Tons of people say that FLW sucks, but I've never heard any explanation of it.

In recent days I've heard some people say that WW was terrible when GSP was king, but that now it's better.

There was a time when LHW and LW seemed to be the best.

Is it just "level of competitiveness" that people are tracking? And I don't mean "level of competition."

In other words, it seems to me that divisions look weak when they have a dominant champ who is way ahead of the competition.

Am I wrong? Or are people thinking of something else?

 

[Wizzlebiz]

Some of it is dominant champs. The other factor is the huge gap in talent between top 4 or 5 and the rest of the division.

 

[awymore]

A lot of it is just the grass is always greener mentality and can be seen in any sport. For instance, with Serena Williams, people will debate how good she is with some claiming that the level of competition is weak and that is what has allowed her to win so many championships. Of course, if she had not won so many, then the level of competition would appear higher but she would also have less championships, so nobody would be debating her greatness in the first place. So you see either way you can't please everybody.

 

[BigMuffler]

FLW is the least populated men's division with LHW and HW being next so you could 'objectively' say it has the smallest/thinnest talent pool. The same way women's FW and AW have far fewer fighters than BW, FLW or SW so it's easy to call them out as being shallower.

If the divisions are closer in numbers then it's harder to say which is better based solely on talent pool size and you might compare how established the divisions are and the groups of fighters near the top.

 

[SlicerDM]

LW, MW, WW, HW. Top heaviest divisions.

Numbering them is a different story and would need some good analysis.

 

[Lucifer Alpha]

Just watch fights. It's not hard to discern whether someone is good or not.