News Sergei Pavlovich is now #3 ranked heavyweight

[Robbocop]

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his last 5 fights :
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Interesting that he can climb so high with such an aggressive strategy of all out offense in the first round. It is very refreshing to see compared to the cautious, judge's decision heavy strategy that many top tier fighters opt for as the safer route to a title shot. He's like the literal inverse of someone like Sean Strickland or Izzy or many other fighters: Talks smack endlessly outside the ring, point fights in the Ring. Pavlovich: Little to no commentary outside the ring, fights to conclusively finish the fight in the first round inside the ring.

Poatan, Ngannou, Jiri, that's a few fighters who bring a similar intensity and effort to finish in the UFC, hard to think of many others who had good success at it. Very reminiscent of Ngannou's initial run up the ladder. It really must be a high risk, high reward strategy.

 

[Doughie99]

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his last 2 wins are lewis and tuivasa, knocked out both under 2 minutes combined
his last 5 fights :
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next obvious fight is Gane without a doubt, since he's no grappler Cyril will take this rather than Blaydes fight

Pavlovich is absolutely a contender. Dude is POWERFUL as hell, and there's not much fat on him, he is 255lbs of MUSCLE.
Tuivasa and Lewis ....both heavier but they have a lot of bodyfat and very likely terrible diets.

Pavlovich can definitely beat any HW on his day.
Gane's footwork & distance-management might keep him safe for a while........but maybe not an entire fight.
Miocic at this point i'd say is basically retired or as good as retired. He could have fought Jon Jones as his last massive fight but seems he couldnt agree terms.
Ngannou..... still am doubtful he fights again for the UFC. -- With the rise of Gane and Pavlovich and the ALLEGED return of Jon Jones, the UFC may decide that they don't really *need* Ngannou anymore as their poster-boy Baddest Man on the Planet.
I certainly don't see UFC bending too much to offer Ngannou what he wants.
On the contract talks, I think UFC will say to Ngannou "here is our final offer, take it or leave it, we're good either way."

Fighting Pavlovich is a very dangerous proposition for any HW, that's for sure.
For Pavlovich the only way is UP so the only fighters ahead of him are Gane and Miocic and Ngannou.

My best guess is Ngannou walks off after failing to agree terms, and so UFC do Gane vs Miocic OR Gane vs Pavlovich as the Interim belt or Undisputed belt. can't really see Gane agreeing to fight Pavlovich and I cannot see Jones agreeing to fight Pavlovich either.

 

[cereal gan]

Gane/Pavlovitch is the fight I wanna see, for sure.

it will happen, gane likes that fight
stylistically good opponent for him and ranked higher than blaydes + hype train behind both
beating each other means a lot for both of them, very fun fight for sure

 

[Kyojiro Kagenuma]

Isn’t Pav booked to fight Aspinall in March? Thought I heard that.

No that was a necro thread.

 

[jko1355]

Sylvia, Randleman, and Herring are really light years better than Volkov, Tai, Lewis??

Randleman was only ranked because of a fluke win over Mirko. Tim Sylvia at the time was a monster was undefeated and tkoed Ricco Rodriguez who was one of the best heavyweights in the world... Tim Sylvia was a great fighter before his health and size literally destroyed his career. Herring was probably about equal to those guys... Lewis and Tai are both really bad fighters with chins and ko power and not even technique.... Volkov is so hit or miss to me... he has good technique but has had durability issues and a lack of urgency at HW which has cost him fights.

So... um... they are probably about equal except Tim Sylvia who is lightyears ahead of Volkov Tai and Lewis in regards to his skills and his career.

That said my post was about depth... we got guys like Marcin Tybura in the top 15 Rozenstrike who is famous for getting his ass kicked by Overeem than hitting him hard once.... guys like Chris Daukaus are top 15.... they are bad enough to lose 1 or 2 and get cut... HW is reallllyyyyy shallow right now. we have like 5 good guys. SHIT lol Arlovski is still top 15 18 years later wtf

half of the top 15 right now just hit hard and have shown no real kickboxing, boxing, or grappling skills... that said its fun to watch haha.

 

[MartinGibson86]

Randleman was only ranked because of a fluke win over Mirko. Tim Sylvia at the time was a monster was undefeated and tkoed Ricco Rodriguez who was one of the best heavyweights in the world... Tim Sylvia was a great fighter before his health and size literally destroyed his career. Herring was probably about equal to those guys... Lewis and Tai are both really bad fighters with chins and ko power and not even technique.... Volkov is so hit or miss to me... he has good technique but has had durability issues and a lack of urgency at HW which has cost him fights.

So... um... they are probably about equal except Tim Sylvia who is lightyears ahead of Volkov Tai and Lewis in regards to his skills and his career.

That said my post was about depth... we got guys like Marcin Tybura in the top 15 Rozenstrike who is famous for getting his ass kicked by Overeem than hitting him hard once.... guys like Chris Daukaus are top 15.... they are bad enough to lose 1 or 2 and get cut... HW is reallllyyyyy shallow right now. we have like 5 good guys. SHIT lol Arlovski is still top 15 18 years later wtf

half of the top 15 right now just hit hard and have shown no real kickboxing, boxing, or grappling skills... that said its fun to watch haha.

Rose colored glasses/nostalgia...


Sylvia fought for the title in his 2nd ufc fight... Blaydes is 13-3 and STILL hasn't gotten a TS. Lewis, Tai, and Volkov wouldn't beat Cabbage??


AA was like 18 before his last loss.



Pick ANY era...go 18 deep or so and tell me that guy is WAY better than current AA


I'll save you the trouble...he isn't.

 

[ferrisjso]

I mean almost none of the established HW's are active for various reasons. Jones, Stipe, Francis, Aspinall all haven't fought in awhile and/or are hurt. Also number 3 in the rankings is actually number 4 cause the champ doesn't count.

I don't see the issue.

 

[Natural Order]

Not having the champion as number 1 is stupid.

Anyway Ngannou and Miocic are inactive.

You're right. Champ is #1, it's nonsensical. Second ranked fighter is considered the #1 contender, but the #2 fighter.

 

[Kyojiro Kagenuma]

You're right. Champ is #1, it's nonsensical. Second ranked fighter is considered the #1 contender, but the #2 fighter.

It makes things simple. Who cares.

 

[CatchtheseHands]

Can someone please tell me how the hell Stipe is still ranked #2? Dude has been rank squatting for 2 years. It's about time he fights or they push him out of that #2 spot. Shit is ridiculous.

 

[BluntForceTrama]

Russian Ray Mercer is going to put a lot of hurt in this division



dude is a smesher




i see a lot eerie similarities between Pavlovich and Mercer in obvious power, handspeed and accuracy.

Not to mention finishing prowess

 

[Mmmmmmma1234]

That's a well deserved spot, although I'd probably rank Blaydes over him at this point.

They'll probably have to fight for that spot.

That's not how the ufc works any chance for a striker to leap over the wrestler without fighting them, into contender they take pavlovich will be fighting gane or frank next or maybe even jones.

 

[Dorkman]

Anyone arguing HW is worse than it used to be, it's the same it's always been. A pretty stout top 5-7. And then quality starts to dip from that point on a bit more drastically than other classes.

 

[Lee_]

Hmm July 2004 rankings were pretty deep from number 1 to number 15.... Half of these guys were successsful at least a decade later... Most of them had well rounded grappling and striking skills... I do think that drug testing has made it much less viable to have talented heavyweight in MMA...

1.Fedor
2. Big Nog
3. Josh Barnatt
4. Frank Mir
5. Tim Sylvia (I know he is a joke now but in 2004 he was still pretty damn good)
6. Kevin Randleman (Kind of lucky timing the month I chose to pull he just KOed Crocop...)(in 2005 he wasn't ranked anymore)
7. Pedro Rizzo
8. Andrei Arlovski
9. Heath Herring
10. Mirko Filipovic
11. Sergei Kharitonov
12. Ricco Rodriguez
13. Gary Goodridge
14. Mark Coleman
15. Semmy Schilt

but I might just be putting a lot of respect on some old legends names.

Yeah, even the less well-rounded grapplers of that time could beat today's top HW's because they have zero ground game. Watching Gane/Francis you can see how vulnerable they would be for anyone that is good on the ground. The earlier guys did more than just hug on the ground.

MMA evolution is a myth starting around 2003-2004.

 

[Spekty]

1.Fedor
2. Big Nog
3. Josh Barnatt
4. Frank Mir
5. Tim Sylvia (I know he is a joke now but in 2004 he was still pretty damn good)
6. Kevin Randleman (Kind of lucky timing the month I chose to pull he just KOed Crocop...)(in 2005 he wasn't ranked anymore)
7. Pedro Rizzo
8. Andrei Arlovski
9. Heath Herring
10. Mirko Filipovic
11. Sergei Kharitonov
12. Ricco Rodriguez
13. Gary Goodridge
14. Mark Coleman
15. Semmy Schilt

I think MMA HW division has improved by a huge margin since then, leaps and bounds. First of all there were only 2 promotions back in the day. Today's UFC roster is deeper than the entire MMA roster of the 00's era. On top of UFC we have promotions like Bellator, PFL, ONE FC + russian promotions like ACA,FNG, Eagle FC, polish KSW. If you combine all the talent in these promotions the list of competent fighters would be 4 times longer than it was in Pride. There' just way more promotions these days, way more fighters with different styles, backgrounds etc. The sport evolved in many parts of the world. Let's take Russia for instance. In 00's there was only Fedor, his brother and Kharitonov + a couple of medicore scrubs like Zentsov. MMA didn't exist in Russia as a sport. Right now I can list like 15 competent HW's from Russia competing in different organisations. Just the shere amount of fighters is way bigger in terms of numbers. These also fighters tend to be more well rounded in general.

I bet even a random regonal HW like Tony Johnson would be top 5 in Pride. The guy is 265 lbs with NCAA background and he has mid level boxing and a chin and he can implement level change in his fighting style. That' be enough to defeat prime Nog because 225 lbs Nog wouldn't be able to take him down and he'd lose on the feet. Johnson would smoke guys like RIzzo, Coleman and Herring, they are way too one dimensional. Other random HW's like Bader,Delija or Malykhin would be top 5 in Pride due to the well rounded skillset. I'm not even going to UFC roster with real top heavyweights.

 

[jko1355]

Rose colored glasses/nostalgia...


Sylvia fought for the title in his 2nd ufc fight... Blaydes is 13-3 and STILL hasn't gotten a TS. Lewis, Tai, and Volkov wouldn't beat Cabbage??


AA was like 18 before his last loss.



Pick ANY era...go 18 deep or so and tell me that guy is WAY better than current AA


I'll save you the trouble...he isn't.

Did you read my post? I'm an AA fan but if you think 2004 hw which had AA in the top 15 is less deep than 2022 which has like 43 year old AA in the top 15 is more deep you have no cognitive abilities.

 

[jko1355]

Yeah, even the less well-rounded grapplers of that time could beat today's top HW's because they have zero ground game. Watching Gane/Francis you can see how vulnerable they would be for anyone that is good on the ground. The earlier guys did more than just hug on the ground.

MMA evolution is a myth starting around 2003-2004.

My point isn't fully linear because I also believe the big punchers of today could ko any of those guys I just doubt it.

 

[Lee_]

My point isn't fully linear because I also believe the big punchers of today could ko any of those guys I just doubt it.

I think today's HW's could KO those from the past, but I doubt they would. It isn't easy to KO someone without getting taken down at least once, which would be doom for any of these guys against someone like Nog or Barnett (who are also especially hard to KO). Plus, I think everyone today would lose in a standup war against prime CC, and there are other strikers that would give today's fighters a hard time in the standup; guys like Goodridge, prime Rizzo, or K1 Schilt are as good or better in the standup as these guys today.

 

[deadshot138]

Beat alot of fat bouncers.
Gane made Tai look like a world beater.
Lewis is a known quitter and a no show.
Shamil is a MW with man boobs.
Greene is a bum.

I'm sure you'd KO Derrick Lewis without breaking a sweat

 

[spinup]

That's not how the ufc works any chance for a striker to leap over the wrestler without fighting them, into contender they take pavlovich will be fighting gane or frank next or maybe even jones.

That's assuming they want to push Pavlovich over Gane.