I've always thought the fighters were more skilled at lhw, and that hw is one of the worst divisions. This got me to thanking, who at lhw would I favor in an open weight tourny. For example, I think jones, Gus, Johnson, and glover could all beat Nelson, Mir, Bigfoot, hunt, and most all the guys ranked below them. Thoughts, also (and I realize I'll get flamed for this) but could someone post the list. I'm using an iphone and it's super tedious do the whole copy paste thing.
Champion : Cain Velasquez 1 Fabricio Werdum (Interim Champion) 2 Junior Dos Santos 3 Travis Browne 4 Stipe Miocic 5 Mark Hunt 6 Josh Barnett 7 Andrei Arlovski 8 Bigfoot Silva 9 Roy Nelson 10 Ben Rothwell 11 Alistair Overeem 12 Matt Mitrione 13 Frank Mir 14 Gabriel Gonzaga 15 Stefan Struve ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Champion : Jon Jones 1 Alexander Gustafsson 2 Daniel Cormier 3 Anthony Johnson 4 Rashad Evans 5 Phil Davis 6 Glover Teixeira 7 Ryan Bader 8 Ovince Saint Preux 9 Dan Henderson 10 Jimi Manuwa 11 Mauricio Rua 12 Rafael Cavalcante 13 Fabio Maldonado 14 Antonio Rogerio Nogueira 15 Patrick Cummins *NR
JDS and Cain beat everyone at LHW other then MAYBE DC.. the rest I think could be beaten by top LHWs. Werdum might beat them all but idk.
I think MMA pretty much drops off ater the LHW division. I wouldn't fancy the chances of most heavyweights against the better light heavyweights. Heavyweight is a division too far in terms of athleticism maybe. This is how it looks to be playing out anyways.
they tried this once. here's what happened: keyboard warriors think they know better than professionals. but professionals (most, at least) do everything they can to fight smaller guys. QED.
Because Wanderlei has the size and skillset of a modern LHW. :icon_lol: Do you guys even try or do you just post random shit thats off-topic for shits and giggles?
hunt and miocic alone beat probably every LHW i can see besides jones and DC. rumble would do well but he himself said "out of the ufc Heavey weight, inside the Ufc Light heavy weight
Didn't wandy win a Grand Prix though 2? And hendo beat wandy coming up from mw. Randy did a way better job against Brock than Mir did, even in his (I'm gettin juiced up phase) Also andy vs Forrest. Skill > size
I really dont understand the fuss about rankings, I get it that there is some pecking order needed but other than that why argue these and who the goat is...cant understand it.
Really? I think he transitions poorly to HW where his lack of power and explosive movement would hurt him. I think Forrest would have made a poor HW for similar reasons. The only guy on Sherdog's top 10 that I would favor him over is Nelson. http://www.sherdog.com/news/rankings/2/Sherdogs-Official-Mixed-Martial-Arts-Rankings-79073
Wandy won a MWGP (in Pride, MW = 205). the pic i posted was from the OWGP (open weight grand prix) semifinals against CroCop. i couldn't find a good pic of his giant fucking hematoma (not as good as Aldo v Hominick but good nonetheless), but this pic is ok Randy did great at LHW and HW, that's for sure. he went down to 205 b/c he was tired of fighting guys who could grapple and weighed so much more. e.g. Barnett, Pedro Rizzo and Ricco Rodriguez. and he was probably the 2nd best LHW of his era (Chuck won rematches 2 & 3). and was a better grappler than any grappler roughly his size. and when he went back up he did great again...until he fought a grappler who was way bigger than him. again. so are there exceptions to the rule? absolutely. for his entire career Hendo seemed to do better at 205 than 183/185 (and of course beat the best 2 HW's in Pride.) could quite a few HW's who are under 230 maybe cut to 205? probably. but could any guy used to 205 decide to fight guys bigger? evidence suggests the few who could are, indeed, exceptions to the rule. however, i'm willing to listen to counter examples, if anyone wanted to post a few. thanks. until then, i seem to be able to count the # of guys who decide to go UP in weight on one hand (maybe 2) and guys who go DOWN in weight i count in the dozens. maybe hundreds. empirical evidence? yes, but it sure says something.
Lmfao at skill > size sentiments. If that was the case weight classes wouldn't exist. Further more if you knew you could hang with the hw yet chose to stay at lhw then you are a retard given hw is always the most lucrative. Just look at Maldonado being a case study.
If there were no weight classes I would rank top ten like this: 1-3: Tossup between Cain - Cormier - Jones 4: Gus 5. JDS 6. Weidman 7. Rumble 8. Machida 9. Werdum 10. Miocic
