The current HW division is embarrassing

[Deleted member 110072]

Just looking at Sherdogs top 10 from July 2009, it includes 46 year old LHW Randy, Nog who may as well have been 46 by then, Tim the sloth who had just been knocked out in under 10 seconds by a 48 year old boxer, and Brett Rogers. With 5'9 39 year old barely mobile with zero striking ability Jeff Monson on the shortlist. If you stretched it out to a full top 20 at that point you'd have guys like Pat Barry, Antoni Hardonk, Mike Russow, Todd Duffee and shit on the list.

I think when you get to 2009 the rankings start to become a bit more iffy because you do have guys like Randy, Nog, Crocop, Sylvia etc who are past their best by that point and people like JDS and Cain are on the way up but you look at the overall quality of the top 10-15 at that point and I think its VERY clearly better than today.

The kind of guys who were top 20 at best back in the day are now often top 10 and have been for quite a few years.

 

[Taric]

There are guys right now that are better than some of those:

Aspinall
Francis
Gane
Nemkov
Almeida

If you have 5 active guys who are better than half the GOAT list, that's pretty good.

The fact that there are people that believe this is so wild

 

[theincognito]

The fact that there are people that believe this is so wild

Aging, "everything was better when I was younger" type posting.

 

[Deleted member 110072]

The fact that there are people that believe this is so wild

Gane and Almedia especially stand out as having glaring holes in their games but that's really par for the course for a lot of HW's near the top of the division today.

To me there more on the level of someone like Mark Coleman back in the day.

 

[Xanzito]

There are guys right now that are better than some of those:

Aspinall
Francis
Gane
Nemkov
Almeida

If you have 5 active guys who are better than half the GOAT list, that's pretty good.

The problem is the division is spread out across different promotions.

And you have to let them juice.

I can see Francis and Aspinall. They are both heavy-handed with a decent-serviceable ground game. But i can't say the same about the others.
If a past his prime Jones coming out of a huge layoff smothered Gane in minutes, imagine him against a Mir or Nog.

 

[theincognito]

I can see Francis and Aspinall. They are both heavy-handed with a decent-serviceable ground game. But i can't say the same about the others.
If a past his prime Jones coming out of a huge layoff smothered Gane in minutes, imagine him against a Mir or Nog.

That's what I'm imagining. Neither of them had good takedowns, nor did they have any speed, thus they would be forced to stand and that wouldn't be pretty.

 

[TeenageMutantLesnarTurtle]

I think when you get to 2009 the rankings start to become a bit more iffy because you do have guys like Randy, Nog, Crocop, Sylvia etc who are past their best by that point and people like JDS and Cain are on the way up but you look at the overall quality of the top 10-15 at that point and I think its VERY clearly better than today.

The kind of guys who were top 20 at best back in the day are now often top 10 and have been for quite a few years.

I dont think there was ever a time where there was 20 HWs at once who were better than the majority of this current top 10 tbh, especially not in a single division rather than spread out across multiple orgs.

I get that this isnt a very compelling era, but I think the lack of star power/interest causes people to underestimate the actual talent level too much. Aspinall, Ngannou and (assuming he hasnt fallen off hard and we just dont know it yet) Jon would be top 10 in any era easily, more like top 5. Pav took the Tom loss hard but the version we got leading up to that looked like a handful in any era. Blaydes finds ways to lose fights but on paper at least he is well equipped to hang in any time and place.

Gane is a tough one because we know he has a weakness to grappling, but we dont know just how much of a weakness it really is. He got outwrestled by Ngannou which seemed like a bad sign but that was years ago (and Ngannou did the same to Renan just now) and obviously Jon made him look bad. But then on the other hand Spivac, who is a good grapple, wasnt able to exploit Ganes weaknesses. If you ARE forced to stand with Gane, hes one of the most technical strikers we've ever seen at HW.

To me there more on the level of someone like Mark Coleman back in the day.

You dont think Jailton in 2024 is significantly harder to beat than Coleman was at any point of his career? come on....

 

[j18lee]

These guys need to get in better shape..

Put the burgers down....ur a professional athlete... For fuck sakes... nobody should be carrying 20 plus percent of body fat

Romanov could be a problem is he didnt have so much fat man cardio...

His takedowns are fantastic but only happen in round 1 currently

Honestly, explain to me why any good sized skilled LHW, whose in cage weight are all around 225, less than 10% body fat and all around 6’2”+ wouldn’t move up to heavyweight.

Without cutting weight and a normal healthy diet, I would think they’d be 235-245 with way better cardio and skills than these fat 260 heavyweights.

I really don’t get it, seems like plenty of unranked LHW would be top 15 HW easily.

 

[TeenageMutantLesnarTurtle]

Honestly, explain to me why any good sized skilled LHW, whose in cage weight are all around 225, less than 10% body fat and all around 6’2”+ wouldn’t move up to heavyweight.

Without cutting weight and a normal healthy diet, I would think they’d be 235-245 with way better cardio and skills than these fat 260 heavyweights.

I really don’t get it, seems like plenty of unranked LHW would be top 15 HW easily.

LHW is even weaker than HW right now if anything.

Do you honestly see a dude like Jiri or Khalil getting past Blaydes, Pavlovich, Gane etc?

 

[Deleted member 110072]

I dont think there was ever a time where there was 20 HWs at once who were better than the majority of this current top 10 tbh, especially not in a single division rather than spread out across multiple orgs.

I get that this isnt a very compelling era, but I think the lack of star power/interest causes people to underestimate the actual talent level too much. Aspinall, Ngannou and (assuming he hasnt fallen off hard and we just dont know it yet) Jon would be top 10 in any era easily, more like top 5. Pav took the Tom loss hard but the version we got leading up to that looked like a handful in any era. Blaydes finds ways to lose fights but on paper at least he is well equipped to hang in any time and place.

Gane is a tough one because we know he has a weakness to grappling, but we dont know just how much of a weakness it really is. He got outwrestled by Ngannou which seemed like a bad sign but that was years ago (and Ngannou did the same to Renan just now) and obviously Jon made him look bad. But then on the other hand Spivac, who is a good grapple, wasnt able to exploit Ganes weaknesses. If you ARE forced to stand with Gane, hes one of the most technical strikers we've ever seen at HW.

You dont think Jailton in 2024 is significantly harder to beat than Coleman was at any point of his career? come on....

Not sure about "better" but I feel like during the HW divisions peak you needed to get well past the top 10 before you reached fighters of the level we see in the top 10 today.

I feel like is anything the reverse is true, a lot of modern HW's get overestimated due to the weakness of the division meaning they really don't get tested very much. Most obviously I think a lot of modern HW's tend to be big brawlers with quite limited grappling.

I think Coleman circa early 00's would be a force at HW today, I'd pick him to beat Gane for example over 15 mins, probably would be via dull control but still. Compared to Almeda Ihis sub grappling is worse(although he was getting subbed by very high level fighters like Nog and Fedor) but his wrestling is significantly better, tougher as well.

 

[TeenageMutantLesnarTurtle]

Not sure about "better" but I feel like during the HW divisions peak you needed to get well past the top 10 before you reached fighters of the level we see in the top 10 today.

I feel like is anything the reverse is true, a lot of modern HW's get overestimated due to the weakness of the division meaning they really don't get tested very much. Most obviously I think a lot of modern HW's tend to be big brawlers with quite limited grappling.

I think Coleman circa early 00's would be a force at HW today, I'd pick him to beat Gane for example over 15 mins, probably would be via dull control but still. Compared to Almeda Ihis sub grappling is worse(although he was getting subbed by very high level fighters like Nog and Fedor) but his wrestling is significantly better, tougher as well.

I like and respect Coleman but the guy was physically broken down arguably before he even got to MMA. He also was on the smaller side for HW but was pretty slow, stiff and awkward with a bad gas tank on top of that. He presented basically zero striking threat and his sub game was very basic. At a stretch on his best night I could potentially see him beating Gane or Lewis in 3 rounder, but I wouldnt put money on it.

I think the "limited grappling" thing is very relative. Imo its more that back in the day having some grappling ability was like a cheat code for success in MMA, you could zero set up double leg some dude inside 30 seconds and stop them with a fucking can opener within a minute. Thats not really the case now. It basically made a lot of the good grapplers from back then look better than they probably would in later eras where the overall level of defensive grappling improved.

 

[Paolo Delutis]

Honestly, explain to me why any good sized skilled LHW, whose in cage weight are all around 225, less than 10% body fat and all around 6’2”+ wouldn’t move up to heavyweight.

Without cutting weight and a normal healthy diet, I would think they’d be 235-245 with way better cardio and skills than these fat 260 heavyweights.

I really don’t get it, seems like plenty of unranked LHW would be top 15 HW easily.

I did a thread on here a few years ago showing and explaining the ideal height and weight for HW champions based on all previous champions ..

235-245 lbs had the highest concentration of champions...

There haas only been two champions that weighed over 265 LBS at that.. it was Brock Lesnar and Francis...both didn't hold the title long and one was caught for roids

I believe 6'2 was the height

 

[Deleted member 110072]

I like and respect Coleman but the guy was physically broken down arguably before he even got to MMA. He also was on the smaller side for HW but was pretty slow, stiff and awkward with a bad gas tank on top of that. He presented basically zero striking threat and his sub game was very basic. At a stretch on his best night I could potentially see him beating Gane or Lewis in 3 rounder, but I wouldnt put money on it.

I think the "limited grappling" thing is very relative. Imo its more that back in the day having some grappling ability was like a cheat code for success in MMA, you could zero set up double leg some dude inside 30 seconds and stop them with a fucking can opener within a minute. Thats not really the case now. It basically made a lot of the good grapplers from back then look better than they probably would in later eras where the overall level of defensive grappling improved.

Coleman was a very effective MMA wrestler indeed during his peak years I would say and even an old broken down version years past his best could still beat someone like Bonnar via wrestling and very often showed extreme toughness yet he was not considered one of the very elite by the mid 00's.

I think just the reverse, we don't see just how limited the grappling is of a lot of these fighters because it so rarely gets tested against elite skill. What grapplers you do have tend to be at a lower level, someone like Tybura for example is clearly not on the level of Werdum, Nog, Fedor or Barnett but he has some sucess still.

Honestly its the same with striking I think, you can get away with being a big brawler with limited defence much more today and still be a top fighter, the idea of matches between guys like Fedor, Crocop, Sergei, Nog, Aleks, etc were you'd get prolonged striking matches were someone doesnt get KOed in a minute or gasses out in a round has become very uncommon now.

Again I feel like a big issue is back in the day promoters used to be much more proactive in terms of going out and signing people direct from other sports, often via having links to camps like RTT or BTT. You can potentially earn a lot at the top of HW today but its a longer and more unsure road to get there which seems to struggle to attract the same level of talent. The UFC's promotional style is basically low risk, they won't throw serious money at people to move to MMA very often, you can only earn the big money when your making them even bigger money.

 

[TeenageMutantLesnarTurtle]

I think just the reverse, we don't see just how limited the grappling is of a lot of these fighters because it so rarely gets tested against elite skill. What grapplers you do have tend to be at a lower level, someone like Tybura for example is clearly not on the level of Werdum, Nog, Fedor or Barnett but he has some sucess still.

You're comparing a fringe top 10 guy to the best grapplers of their era though. You dont think Jon, Tom, Jailton, Blaydes, Spivac, Romanov etc are good grapplers?

Honestly its the same with striking I think, you can get away with being a big brawler with limited defence much more today and still be a top fighter, the idea of matches between guys like Fedor, Crocop, Sergei, Nog, Aleks, etc were you'd get prolonged striking matches were someone doesnt get KOed in a minute or gasses out in a round has become very uncommon now.

But again you're using the best strikers of the Pride era as an example (while forgetting the dudes who bring down the averages like Coleman, Randleman, Erickson, Kerr, Sapp, Zulu, Fujita, James Thompson etc etc) and not comparing them against the current best strikers. Gane, Tom, Pav, Volkov, Rozenstruik etc hold their own against that group in the stand up then obviously theres Ngannou and Renan outside of the UFC too. Even dudes like Lewis and Tai, sloppy as they are, would sleep plenty of dudes throughout history just with their sheer power.

Remember the UFC just cut a 6'7 TKD olympian too.

 

[Deleted member 110072]

You're comparing a fringe top 10 guy to the best grapplers of their era though. You dont think Jon, Tom, Jailton, Blaydes, Spivac, Romanov etc are good grapplers?

Someone like Werdum was "fringe top 10" during the 00's.

 

[Hellowhosthat]

Not sure about "better" but I feel like during the HW divisions peak you needed to get well past the top 10 before you reached fighters of the level we see in the top 10 today.

I feel like is anything the reverse is true, a lot of modern HW's get overestimated due to the weakness of the division meaning they really don't get tested very much. Most obviously I think a lot of modern HW's tend to be big brawlers with quite limited grappling.

I think Coleman circa early 00's would be a force at HW today, I'd pick him to beat Gane for example over 15 mins, probably would be via dull control but still. Compared to Almeda Ihis sub grappling is worse(although he was getting subbed by very high level fighters like Nog and Fedor) but his wrestling is significantly better, tougher as well.

Gane seems like a stretch for Coleman to me. He was pretty stiff on the feet and needed blast doubles. I think without any striking threat he's going to struggle to get takedowns against a guy like Gane.

 

[TeenageMutantLesnarTurtle]

Someone like Werdum was "fringe top 10" during the 00's.

As an overall MMA fighter yeah, not in terms of his ground game.

 

[TeenageMutantLesnarTurtle]

Gane seems like a stretch for Coleman to me. He was pretty stiff on the feet and needed blast doubles. I think without any striking threat he's going to struggle to get takedowns against a guy like Gane.

I wouldnt totally write Coleman off especially if it was just a 3 rounder. But yeah, Ganes distance control and quickness would probably be a major hurdle for him. As good as Marks wrestling pedigree was, by the time he got to MMA he wasnt exactly very quick or fluid in his movement.

 

[Deleted member 110072]

As an overall MMA fighter yeah, not in terms of his ground game.

He was ranked around were Tybura is now.

 

[Hellowhosthat]

He was ranked around were Tybura is now.

The problem with the rankings at the moment is there's a bunch of Russians they won't sign.

I think in reality Tybura is somewhere between 20-25 in the world.