Where does the myth of the heavyweight division becoming worst comes from?

[stinkynecklace]

Why the pride heavyweight division is belived to be so great by sherdogers in general? They had fedor, big nog, cro cop ( who couldnt defend a takedown to save his life in the beggining ) and thats it, somehow sherdogers say that was the prime of the division. Another argument is made for cain's era and again i just dont see it, cain defeated brock fucking lesnar to win the title, a guy that had to beat a 50years old man three times smaller than him to win the belt lol.

The heavyweight division of today sucks pretty bad, but still is better than every other period of its history

You left out Barnett. Pride also had great prospects at HW in Sergei, Aleks, Werdum, Overeem. Most of these guys came over to the UFC and continued to have success after their prime. Nog became an interim champ, Werdum became champ, Overeem is a perennial contender. Mark Hunt had a hell of a run in the UFC. I would say for a top 10 at HW to have that many elite fighters is rare.

 

[Paynebringer]

Where does the myth of the heavyweight division becoming worst comes from?




Reality...

 

[beastman]

Manlets and those that just loved the Pride HW division a little too much.

HW division always has a ton of finishes and great fights. If one HW fight is boring on a random card, there is always someone who comes in and says the division sucks.

 

[PalmStrike]

It comes from the old grumpy fans whio don't like that they don't see the names they are used to.
They are 20 years in the past.
"Where is Fedor? Where is Don Frye? Wher eis Kimbo Slice? Have you heard of htis new guy, Andrei Arlovski? He's a very talented young prospect!"

Dude, Pride was only like 15 years ago...

 

[jx820]

HW didn't become the worst. It's always been terrible. There are less people that size in general. So less athletes that size. Less competiontion makes it easier for mediocre talent to rise pretty high. The meh, level of competion allows actually talented fighters to stay at the top of the game until they are 40. Half of the HW top 10 is 35+ (Stipe, DC, Overeen, JDS, Harris, Abdurakh...). LW is just Cowboy and Tony over 35..

 

[Takes_Two_To_Tango]

HW division at any time and point has been the weakest division out there. There is not enough big athletic guys around who like to get punched in the face. Just think how many guys that size you know who are actually fit and talented and then think how many regular size guys like that you know.

Why do the LHW cut weight to avoid fighting at HW? If the HW is a weak division.

If it's true that it's a weak division. You would see a lot of current LHW not cutting weight.

 

[Te Huna Matata]

Derick Lewis got a title shot

Pretty much all that needs to be said. The HW division has been garbage for years. There are a handful of really talented guys at the top but after that, the talent pool is comically shallow.

 

[spinup]

Who's throwing headkicks in the top 10 right now? Everyone just boxes and brawls.

Jump on the Gane hype train now my friend.

 

[blaseblah]

I don't believe Pride HWs were the best of all time but they had great packaging and promotion. It made the guys seem larger than life. Technically the majority of Pride guys weren't that good. In that era, people used to jerk off to fighters throwing a headkick or lowkick. A lot of stuff is standard now.

None of the top guys today throw kicks though.

 

[NoBiasJustMMA]

It's not a myth. Everyone who watched MMA in the mid 2000s will tell you the same.

 

[spinup]

None of the top guys today throw kicks though.

JdS landed some very nice spinning back kicks to the body vs Lewis.
Volkov has really good front kicks and lead leg high kicks.
Rozenstruik KOd Albini with a nice head kicks.
Lewis throws a lot of switch head kicks, but they never land, too predictable.
Gane throws pretty much everything: headkicks, lover kicks, flying knees, spinning back kicks.

 

[NoBiasJustMMA]

HWs now have more skills than in the past Pride era.
But compared to all other divisions - HW has always been the weakest

No they don't. Sergei, Fedor, Barnett, Big Nog, Werdum, and Overeem were more well rounded in Pride than just about any HW currently in the UFC.

 

[Huligani]

Today it's the old man division

 

[Benoitthegr8]

I’d argue 10 years ago was close to the best crop of HW’s at the end of Pride era, even 5 years ago was ridiculously better than the current top 10...2015 was unfortunately completely stagnant because HW had Cain Velasquez holding up progress within the division for years on end.

Note the lack of UFC fighters ranked in the top 10 during the 2005/07 era, with the exception of Arlovski, Silva, and Couture the UFC was barren of talent at HW.

Apologies for the shitty format, bad copy and paste job

HW Rankings Jan 2005

1 Fedor Emelianenko 23-1-0

2 Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira 25-3-1

3 Mark Hunt 2-1-0

4 Mirko Filipovic 16-3-2

5 Andrei Arlovski 9-3-0

6 1 Josh Barnett 18-2-0

7 1 Sergei Kharitonov 13-3-0

8 4 Ron Waterman 13-3-2

9 Lyoto Machida 6-0-0

10 Tim Sylvia


HW Rankings Oct 2007 (when Pride was purchased by Zuffa)

1 Fedor Emelianenko 27-1-0

2 3 Randy Couture 16-8-0

3 -1 Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira 30-4-1

4 -1 Gabriel Gonzaga 8-2-0

5 1 Josh Barnett 23-5-0

6 35 Cheick Kongo 11-3-1

7 -3 Mirko Filipovic 22-6-2

8 -1 Mark Coleman 15-8-0

9 -1 Mark Hunt 5-3-0

10 -1 Tim Sylvia


HW Rankings Jan 2010

1 Fedor Emelianenko 31-1-0

2 Brock Lesnar 4-1-0

3 Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira 32-5-1

4 Frank Mir 13-4-0

5 Junior dos Santos 9-1-0

6 Josh Barnett 27-5-0

7 1 Brett Rogers 10-1-0

8 3 Cain Velasquez 7-0-0

9 1 Fabricio Werdum 13-4-1

10 -1 Shane Carwin 11-0-0


HW Rankings Jan 2015

1 Cain Velasquez 13-1-0

2 Fabricio Werdum 19-5-1

3 Junior dos Santos 17-3-0

4 Andrei Arlovski 23-10-0

5 1 Travis Browne 17-2-1

6 -1 Mark Hunt 10-9-1

7 Antonio Silva 18-6-1

8 Ben Rothwell 34-9-0

9 Alistair Overeem 38-14-0

10 Josh Barnett


Current HW Rankings

1 Stipe Miocic 19-3-0

2 Daniel Cormier 22-2-0

3 Francis Ngannou 14-3-0

4 Junior dos Santos 21-6-0

5 Derrick Lewis 22-7-0

6 2 Ryan Bader 27-5-0

7 -1 Curtis Blaydes 12-2-0

8 38 Jairzinho Rozenstruik 10-0-0

9 -2 Alistair Overeem 45-18-0

10 -1 Alexander Volkov

 

[Clear Winner]

Today it's the old man division

JDS - 35
Blaydes - 28
Stipe - 37
Ngannou - 33
BB - 34

Hardly old, but not young.

 

[Paynebringer]

Jump on the Gane hype train now my friend.

He's bringing a level of athleticism that has not or ever been seen in the HW division there is no doubt at least in my eyes that he's studied the Jon Jones book of fight styling...

 

[daemusvladornu]

Maybe because the current roster of HW's is basically a bunch of big guys playing rock em sock em robots? Yeah, CroCop was mainly a striker... but he was unbelievably talented at what he did. The HW division is about as one dimensional as it's ever been.

 

[NoBiasJustMMA]

JDS - 35
Blaydes - 28
Stipe - 37
Ngannou - 33
BB - 34

Hardly old, but not young.

You left out DC who is 40 and Overeem who is also 39+.

It's not as bad as it was a year or two ago but it's still an old division.

1. Stipe 37
2. DC 40
3. Ngannou 33
4. Blaydes 28
5. JDS 35
6. Lewis 34
7. Rozenstruik 31
8. Volkov 31
9. Overeem 39
10.Harris 36

Average age of the top 10 34.4

 

[thobra]

Why the pride heavyweight division is belived to be so great by sherdogers in general? They had fedor, big nog, cro cop ( who couldnt defend a takedown to save his life in the beggining ) and thats it, somehow sherdogers say that was the prime of the division. Another argument is made for cain's era and again i just dont see it, cain defeated brock fucking lesnar to win the title, a guy that had to beat a 50years old man three times smaller than him to win the belt lol.

The heavyweight division of today sucks pretty bad, but still is better than every other period of its history

I agree that it might have been weaker in the socalled Cain era, but just watch the sloppy title fight with the two socalled best HWs, DC And Stipe - then go watch Fedor vs Crocop. You will change your mind.

 

[No Skill Gap]

The problem here is that you are comparing an era of MMA from 2001-2006 (Pride) to the era of 2015-2020 let's say to be even.

Well first of all obviously every sport, not just MMA's, talent pool and ~skill is going to increase over time. Baseball players from 2019 are way better than ones from the 1920s-1950s but you will still have some people (old heads) claiming Ty Cobb would be great today (based on nothing).

It's the same with MMA, even far more dramatically in terms of skill. So you are comparing an era where at the same time Matt Hughes just won the belt in late 2001 then defended it. That WW division was considered one of the best divisions in the sport, easily, and it contained names such as: Matt Hughes, Frank Trigg, Sean Sherk (LW), B.J. Penn (LW), Carlos Newton, Hayato Sakurai, Joe Riggs, Royce Gracie old man, Dennis Hallman, very young GSP, Matt Serra, Chris Lytle, Karo Parisyan - all 3 towards the end, then the TUF 1 crew like Diego Sanchez, Koscheck, and even Florian at WW towards the end.

GSP beat Hughes for the title in 2006, at the end of this time period comparatively v.s. Pride HW.

So in less words, my point is comparing HW now to 2001-2006 isn't even fair. Obviously any division has better talent overall now, the skill and sport has evolved and continued to improve. The WWs now would overall kill the WWs from 2001-2006. Matt Hughes is an all-time great WW but his skills probably aren't well rounded enough or 'good' enough to be a top guy today, opposed to the GOAT prior to GSP at welterweight back then.

Getting to the point...so even if Pride 2001-2006 is CLOSE to ~2017-2020 HW standards that's an indictment in itself.

It's pretty obvious, HW has the worst athletes and technicians out of any division and always has. Overall the talent pool is better now than 2001-2006 I would agree...but if scaled it's not, and there isn't really great top end talent at HW right now either. Are we counting DC? sure, basically it's DC and Stipe - I guess -, and Ngannou...I guess.

Some of the top HWs from this 5 year 2015-2020 period have been FROM the 2001-2006 pride era: Overeem, Werdum, and ~Arlovski, ~Barnett. ~Fedor (non UFC). ~Nog but a bit earlier, etc.

TLDR: HW does in fact suck and it's because all the top HW sized athletes go to play Football/Basketball or other sports generally, the skill level is significantly worse than lighter men's divisions, and yes HW is better now but the improvement is less so compared to other divisions over time. Also it's very plausible that top HWs from Pride era (Fedor, Overeem a bit older and roidier, Werdum - we've seen it, etc) would beat the HW champions of 2015-2020 and be championship level HWs in the UFC.