- almost drop MW to HW and work only to lower weight classes and women absolutely, they're gaining a spot in MMA that they don't have in many other sports.
their hw, lhw divisions their are very mediocre, of course he has fun fight to watch but it's impossible to build a decent categorie.
That's one of those things people say that just isn't true. Any organization can build a good heavyweight division just by matching up prospects against each other in a tournament-esque format. It worked for the UFC (from 2001-2006, when every other good heavyweight was in Pride and they had to build up their own talent rather than buy everyone else's), Rings, Pride, 90's Pancrase, and you're even seeing it now with Bellator (they've got two guys that're unanimously-ranked in the top-15 right now, and they got them from doing nothing but holding prospect-filled tournaments which, eventually, due to the nature of the heavyweight division, resulted in a sprig of top-15 and -20 fighters). It just takes time and willpower, and most organizations skip out before they see the payoffs. Unlike the other divisions, established veterans aren't a requirement for a promotion's heavyweight division to be granted "legitimacy"; any organization can gain a legitimate heavyweight division with some top-15 fighters (maybe even some top-10 fighters down the line) just by not giving up on it and focusing on building up their own talent for a couple years, during which time they end up providing a slew of entertaining finishes. Again, it just takes willpower and time.
This's one of the upsides of a division that's so sparse on talent. It's hard to get hold of the already-established fighters (since there are so few of them)-- who, by the way, almost all got their status by initially winning the same sort of prospect-filled psuedo-tournament that I'm talking about or by, luckily, getting a shot against a winner of that sort of tournament and came out victorious (look at the history of the heavyweights and you'll find this to be true)-- but it's ridiculously simple to
create established fighters. With every other division, you need to both build up your own talent and find the already-established talent in order for the division to be granted "legitimacy" within the organization's walls, but with heavyweight you don't need to. This even happens, albeit to a slightly lesser extent, at light-heavyweight (in another Bellator parable, Atilla Vegh ascended unanimously into the top-15 by Bellator doing this). It also works at middleweight to yet another lesser extent, but any organization can still end up with a nice sprig of good middleweights, maybe even with one or two top-15 fighters (though that spot's typically reserved for the #1 guy in the promotion's middleweight division, ala Alexander Shlemenko). One FC knows this and is already working on accomplishing this goal down the line. If they'd partner up with M-1 and get their hands on the heavyweights they've got, it'd only speed this process up. Chris Barnett would also be fun to see in One FC.
The only thing focusing on the lighter weight divisions does is limit the amount of success they- and the fighters they promote have, while gaining the approval of the minute percentage of this sport's community who falsely think that this strategy is the only means for the promotion to have success. However, I do wanna say that I firmly think that One FC becoming the mecca for 115-pound men's fighters in the world in the home of the largest amount of successful ~115-pound combat sport practitioners in the world (I.E., east- and southeast-Asia) would help them to gain a very worthwhile edge in this sport. There're also a lot of
very great fighters at the top of the 115-pound ladder right now that are desperate for a good promotion that wants to focus on them-- Rambaa Somdet, Mitsuhisa Sunabe, Mikihito Yamagami, Shinya Murofushi, Nobita Naito, Yuki Shojo, and even some of the other good fighters in the division like Sarumaru, Tahara and Rey Docyogen (he fought at 115 for years before he moved to 125 for One FC). It'd also kickstart that division's activity in the mecca for that division's talent, which'd eventually produce a champion from that region (regional #1 fighters in a weight-class almost always draw large when they're combined with a good promotion, even if it's a small weight-class; Yoshio Shirai's world-title fight drew 45,000 people and kickstarted boxing in Japan, and he fought at 112). However, that's a discussion for another time, and doing that doesn't require the abandoning of the 185-205+ divisions.
