Who has the better Welterweight Division: Bellator or UFC?

[Guile]

UFC by far and this is coming from someone who is a HUGE Bellator supporter and Rory is my favourite fighter. UFC has the following:

Woodley
Wonderboy
Maia
Condit
RDA
Akiyama
DHK
Saffiedine
Breese
Gall
Brown
Cerrone
Cote
Covington
Mein
Diaz
Edwards
Ellenberger
Garcia
Good
Jouban
LaFlare
Lawler
Masvidal
Magny
Luque
Lombard
Lim
Means
Meek
Moraes
Muhammad
Gunnar
Price
Ponz
Perry
Brazilian Cowboy
Alhassan
Roberts
Killa B
Erick Silva
Sobotta
GSP
Strickland
Taleb
Till
Usman

among a few others
Most of these guys are better than many guys on the Bellator roster.

 

[orangecuse]

The top - 5, the most important part is very close but after that not so much.

TS, add to Bellator: Chidi, Gonzales, Ward, Rainey, Fialho.
to UFC: DHK, Usman, Gunnar, Ponzi, RDA.

And remove: Davis, Jouban, Perry, Meek.

Jouban and Meek aren't on the level off Chidi, Gonzales, Ward, Rainey, etc?

Why not?

 

[Meathead Jock]

The top - 5, the most important part is very close but after that not so much.

Bellators top 5: average age of 28 years old.

UFC top 5: average age of 35 years old.

So if the top 5 are even right now I'm not sure how the scale won't tip fully in Bellators favor moving forward.

170lbs is light enough that people don't stay good forever in the USADA era.

 

[SalvadorAllende]

UFC I think but it is getting surprisingly close. A few more signings and Bellator could surpass the UFC.

BTW.. the UFC champion looked amateur vs one of Bellator contenders.

Is Condit still fighting?

 

[CC27]

Bellator has the more exciting WW division by far. So many cool match ups.
UFC has the ranked fighters, but that's purely due to political reasons.

In other words, I'd rather watch MVP or Daley knock people out cold, than Maia hump somebody's leg for 5 rounds.
Also, do you not remember how Woodley vs Thompson went? What a stinker that was. I legitimately fell asleep during this fight and woke up with my laptop on the floor. Not even trying to be funny here.

Maia finished 3 of his last 4 fight, Brown, Magny and Condit.

MVP just had one of the worst fights of the year his last time out when he actually fought someone with a pulse and not a dude from the stands.

 

[pankrat]

Even Scott Coker would laugh at this. Who is the best wrestler in Bellator at 170??
If you take the best welterweights fighting out of UFC under one banner, maybe you may have a point about if its better than UFC. Bellator alone? Its not even close. You really need to be a hard fanboy (or ufc hater idk) to think otherwise.

ACB is closer to Bellator than Bellator is to UFC, at 170

 

[Meathead Jock]

Even Scott Coker would laugh at this. Who is the best wrestler in Bellator at 170??
If you take the best welterweights fighting out of UFC under one banner, maybe you may have a point about if its better than UFC. Bellator alone? Its not even close. You really need to be a hard fanboy (or ufc hater idk) to think otherwise.

ACB is closer to Bellator than Bellator is to UFC, at 170

Bellator has Rory who has crushed the champ and the number 1 contender already in the UFC. He lost to Robbie but he is also a lot younger than Robbie.

Larkin crushed Magney in his last fight which is ranked 5th or 6th in the weight class.

Benson beat Masvidal who is ranked 5th or 6th.

Koreskov murdered Benson (who beat Masvidal).

Lima has beaten Koreshkov.

If you are talking about the top 5 I feel like you are the one who is a fanboy by thinking the UFC has a distant lead. When the above shows they are already beating UFC guys and they are doing so while being on average 7 years younger.

Again if you are talking about depth then you are right UFC is clearly the leader.

 

[TheBrownRanger]

With the poll, I now know there are quite a bit of Bellator fanboys on this forum.

Bellator is top heavy, sure, but they can't even do their own top 15 without the whole division looking like shit after #9. Newcomers in Bellator can be considered for title contention after 3 wins.

Demian Maia is by no means a newcomer but he has 6 wins and hasn't even had a title shot yet. The UFC ladder is a more painful climb that is almost completely free of squash matches (Daley vs Urich, MVP's fights *cough*).

 

[Meathead Jock]

With the poll, I now know there are quite a bit of Bellator fanboys on this forum.

Bellator is top heavy, sure, but they can't even do their own top 15 without the whole division looking like shit after #9. Newcomers in Bellator can be considered for title contention after 3 wins.

Do they really need that many people right now?
So many of the Bellator top 170 lbers haven't fought each other that they have a ton of fresh matchups to be made still. They can add guys to the roster casually while letting the names above fight each other.

They are a few years away from being the UFC light heavyweight division where all the best guys have already fought each other aside from Rumble vs Jones.

As long as they don't stop adding people they have a healthy amount of fighters being they aren't already at the rematch stage.

 

[pankrat]

Bellator has Rory who has crushed the champ and the number 1 contender already in the UFC. He lost to Robbie but he is also a lot younger than Robbie.

Larkin crushed Magney in his last fight which is ranked 5th or 6th in the weight class.

Benson beat Masvidal who is ranked 5th or 6th.

Koreskov murdered Benson (who beat Masvidal).

Lima has beaten Koreshkov.

If you are talking about the top 5 I feel like you are the one who is a fanboy by thinking the UFC has a distant lead. When the above shows they are already beating UFC guys and they are doing so while being on average 7 years younger.

Again if you are talking about depth then you are right UFC is clearly the leader.

There is not much point in that mma math you post....Koreshkov, Lima or Larkin has lost before as well.

The point is there are 5 or 6 welters in Bellator that could be a tough fight for even the best in UFC
But there are 10 or 15 welters in UFC that could be a tough fight for even the best in Bellator
Call it depth if you want, the thing is UFC is way better.

Also, you cant talk about "top 5" as if it were a scientific thing. Nelson, Kim, Saffiedine, Condit or Cerrone arent top 5 in UFC but they could still hang with Lima, Koreshkov or Daley.

You hardly can say the same about Page, Gonzalez or Rainey against top10 guys in UFC

 

[TheBrownRanger]

Do they really need that many people right now?
So many of the Bellator top 170 lbers haven't fought each other that they have a ton of fresh matchups to be made still. They can add guys to the roster casually while letting the names above fight each other.

They are a few years away from being the UFC light heavyweight division where all the best guys have already fought each other aside from Rumble vs Jones.

As long as they don't stop adding people they have a healthy amount of fighters being they aren't already at the rematch stage.

I understand what you mean but Bellator rarely ever puts those good match-ups to use. This is mainly in part due to Rich Chou's shit matchmaking. Are we gonna see MVP fight Koreshkov or Chidi on the next London card? No, we're going to watch him fight a Lightweight who last his last fight. There IS good matchups that can be made, we're just not going to see a whole lot of them. The guys ranked after #9 in Bellator? This is their purpose of being on the roster, building up hype jobs and, in sad cases, actual contenders.

Bellator WW will probably never reach UFC LHW level of burnout but I do not mean that in a good way.

 

[Meathead Jock]

I understand what you mean but Bellator rarely ever puts those good match-ups to use. This is mainly in part due to Rich Chou's shit matchmaking. Are we gonna see MVP fight Koreshkov or Chidi on the next London card? No, we're going to watch him fight a Lightweight who last his last fight. There IS good matchups that can be made, we're just not going to see a whole lot of them.

Bellator WW will probably never reach UFC LHW level of burnout but I do not mean that in a good way.

Yep. I was thinking the same thing as I was writing it. I was thinking "its kind of ridiculous how few of these guys have fought each other yet". They have the option to have them go at each other now though and give us great matchups for a couple of years instead of giving us squash fights for fear of losing a top guy.

But yea.. They could go back to protecting them soon, but the next few months kind of gives me hope that they finally intend to let the weight class playout.

 

[Stan]

We will never know because the UFC has feared for years to match up their top fighters against top fighters in other Orgs. Everyone on here believed the BULLSHIT UFC Hype of UFC fighters were way better than those that were in any Org including Strikeforce and we all know that was far from the truth as Strikeforce fighters started winning UFC belts and became the top contenders in almost all weight divisions. So based on that Bellator has the better WW fighters since the UFC still fears letting their fighters fight elsewhere.

 

[007]

still UFC is winning

 

[MuyThaiElbows]

The top six or seven are pretty even imo.