WW is clearly better than Usman era, I urge you to re-evaluate. The Masvidal/Till/Burns/Leon era of contenders was a weaker one than it is now, obviously. Usman and Colby jerking each other off in rematches that were close. Yeah, safe to say Garry, Shavkat, Islam, Morales types are kinda just better. Colby always sucked. Masvidal was a LW who ran out of options and ate too much taco bell. Till was awful. Burns another LW who found a resurgence at 170.
But I agree that 170lbs in the UFC isnt the best, outside of it? Its pretty good I have my eyes on a lot of talent. PFL has a pretty good 170lb division too. But at 185 and up theres just painfully little talent. 125lbs has loads of talent too, just a lot of young guys with extensive combat sports backgrounds, amateur careers in MMA that are now pro and winning with active fighting schedules in their early 20s. You do not find that level of talent often at 185lbs and up.
Right I totally agree that there's far more talent at 125-135-145-155-170 and then there's a dramatic fall-off once we get to 185-205-225+
Obviously, there are just not that many human beings overall globally or even in NA that are 200+ to 250+ lbs that are also athletic and skilled. Specifically in NA those top tier athletes tend to go into football, basketball, boxing, etc, over MMA. And then further, there's less training partners to be had across all martial arts/forms when you're bigger, and they can rely on size/strength over skill, etc.
Disagree about WW though. I did say prior to Islam moving up, if you want to count that as a cop out that's fine but I specified. Either way, he's a LW as well. Shavkat I'll give you. Even then, who's he beaten exactly? I think you're totally pumping up the current WW roster. If you don't like Colby Covington because of political reasons and him being a douchebag, fine, but he was good. Not great. Right now the 3rd ranked WW is Ian Garry, come on.
I'll take - Rory, Condit, Lawler, Woodley, Usman, Burns (almost beat Khamzat at WW), Covington, Edwards, Stephen Thompson, Maia, RDA, toss in your Chiesa/Magny/Masvidal too. Over the current crop at WW. Shavkat seems dominant, Morales is explosive, Garry is solid, you got Prates too. A LW jumped up and won the belt of JDM. But it's just a lot of journeyman esque talent or utterly unproven talent like Shavkat and Morales. Their best combined wins are Neil Magny, Geoff Neal, a 40+ year old Stephen Thompson, and Sean Brady.
I was omitting Islam. But even with him there, the division sucks. If Khamzat could make weight and fight there hypothetically + Islam is there, then we're talking because there's high end talent. As of right now there's Islam, Shavkat possibly, and a bunch of journeymen.
We just have to disagree then because I don't think WW is particularly talented at all right now and it's extremely shallow.
