Why are the boxing and ufc hw divisions about equally stale?

The HW division is shallow because the average male weight is below 200 lbs.
 
Just my personal opinion. But at my gym we have ALOT of big strong guys come through and get deystroyed by little guys and not come back. I wonder if being so big and being able to overpower in other sports just can't take the humility that comes with the first yr or so of mma.
 
I think the UFC heavyweight division is better than its ever been, which isn't saying a lot because its always been a weak division.

Cain, JDS, Werdum, Overreem; plus, Hunt, Bigfoot, Big Country, Travis Brown and Josh Barnett. I dunno, there are a lot of good match ups there. Its not LW or WW, but its a strong division now.
 
Big guys are typically not good athletes and the ones who are would generally prefer to make a living in the NFL, NBA etc. as opposed to by doing something which requires the heart and will to overcome adversity and so forth.
 
I'm 216 and in shape. Should I cut to 205 or start eating buckets of peanut butter?
 
JKG said:
In what way is this specifically related to the HW division?
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Not a direct correlation, but like others have said, if you're a 200+ lbs ( and 6'2"+) good/great athlete, you're most likely pushed towards football, basketball, baseball in America, and Hockey in Canada, northern USA and Europe, and throw in rugby and track & field, too.

If you're a smallish guy but have excellent athleticism, martial arts, particularly wrestling, would be one of a few options where the lack of weight/height isn't necessarily a detriment.

Basically, a bigger athlete has more options to use his gifts than a smaller athlete would. I think that explains why the lower weight classes have more quality depth. Plus, if you just look at the general population, most (generally healthy) people aren't going to be near heavyweight, whereas I'd bet that the majority of people we know (in decent health and shape) are in a range of 130-200lbs.

So, HW depth gets burned from both ends.
 
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MMA gets the football players not good enough to play football.

Mitrione, Schuab, Lesnar, Marcus Jones, Shivers

Mainly white guys
 
Kingfarthur said:
I think the UFC heavyweight division is better than its ever been, which isn't saying a lot because its always been a weak division.

Cain, JDS, Werdum, Overreem; plus, Hunt, Bigfoot, Big Country, Travis Brown and Josh Barnett. I dunno, there are a lot of good match ups there. Its not LW or WW, but its a strong division now.
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This, if you wanna talk about the fighters themselves I think the UFC's hw division is pretty deep. Definitely deeper then boxing, though you gotta watch out for Deontay Wilder. He's 31-0 with 31 knockouts he could be the next big American heavyweight!
 
Post 2 Decision said:
MMA gets the football players not good enough to play football.

Mitrione, Schuab, Lesnar, Marcus Jones, Shivers

Mainly white guys
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Dont forget Herschel Walker. A retired A-level athlete can hang with pro fighters in their prime.
 
mrsinister said:
As measured by turnover at the top 10.

Looking at the top 10 (Champ+1 through 9) annual HW's from Ring magazine over the last 5 years, there have only been 16 top 10 boxing HW's for 2009-2013. For MMA, Sherdog's December rankings for 2009 through 2013 have a total of 17 distinct names, about the same. (I didn't see any truly apples-to-apples annual mma rankings, but the results seems right).

Since there's way more money at the top in HW boxing, why hasn't there been more competition as well? iI seems like the divisions everyone agrees are more competitive have a lot more turnover.

Maybe it's just really, really hard to get guys to fight big guys--even if they themselves are big--because fighting big guys is just plain terrifying for everyone.
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A lot of rankings are US centric or US/western Europe centric and routinely overlook eastern europeans/former USSR country athletes. The rankers don't see a lot of the fighters or fights in those areas so they downgrade them. You can see a similar situation in the US itself, boxers from certain areas are talked about with the following disclaimer, he is 15-0 but "most of his fights were in North Carolina, or Minnesota or X state" because many view only a few states as having tough, skilled competition.
Adorkami said:
HW division in both sports are shallow because most people don't want to be punched in the face for a living.
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JKG said:
In what way is this specifically related to the HW division?
Click to expand...
Relation could be that the potential talent pool for heavyweight is already small; most athletes around the world are not heavy enough to compete in the heavyweight divisions.



As for American athletes, it isn't all about financial incentives. In the US there are many, many more youth leagues for other sports. Junior highs and high schools have field dozens of sports teams and very few offer boxing (some prep schools do have teams).
Look at the top high school sports for boys by number of participants for 2012-13:
1. Football - 1,115,208
2. Track and Field – Outdoor 580,672
3. Basketball 538,676
4. Baseball 474,791
5. Soccer 410,982
6. Wrestling 270,163
7. Cross Country 249,200
8. Tennis 157,247
9. Golf 152,584
10. Swimming and Diving 138,177

Other sports are more easily available to kids and they grow up playing them.
Take those 1.1 million kids playing football, estimate 1/4 of them graduate each year, so 280,000 potentially bound for college. Given the number of DI teams - FBS & FCS - there are only about 8000 kids going into DI every year. Obviously more than that go on to play DII, DIII, NAIA, juco but very, very few of those are going to make it to the pros (maybe a few make a NFL roster every year).

Also college football offers a massive number of scholarships compared to other mens sports: 85 total for DI/FBS and almost every school offers the full amount while many other schools don't offer the full number allowed for other sports even if the maximum allowed is 18, 14, 12.6, 9.9, 4.5, etc.
FCS football I believe allows 63 scholarships spread over a maximum of 85 kids.
DII football allows up to 36 scholarships; so even DII football allows more scholarships than every other DI sport outside of football (the next highest DI sport is hockey with 18 max). So it is common to see kids going to play DII football instead of a DI sport besides football.

Kids are playing those sports because they want to and they are easily available. After participating in them until they are 18 or early 20s, few guys want to make the transition to boxing or mma. You're talking about another few years of training before they are even going to be decent at it, for most that is a path they don't want to take.
Heck, the vast majority of collegiate wrestlers, the guys that have already learned a skill set to transition on, don't even consider going into mma. Look at some recent national tournaments and see how few actually are fighting.
Example: I think only 4 all-americans from 2011 (80 total) have had a mma fight.
 
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Hey Marcus Jones had a 10-sack season with the Bucs. He wasn't bad, just had some injuries and then they picked up Simeon Rice. But yeah, Jones was well past his physical prime when he got into MMA.
 
mrsinister said:
As measured by turnover at the top 10.

Looking at the top 10 (Champ+1 through 9) annual HW's from Ring magazine over the last 5 years, there have only been 16 top 10 boxing HW's for 2009-2013. For MMA, Sherdog's December rankings for 2009 through 2013 have a total of 17 distinct names, about the same. (I didn't see any truly apples-to-apples annual mma rankings, but the results seems right).

Since there's way more money at the top in HW boxing, why hasn't there been more competition as well? iI seems like the divisions everyone agrees are more competitive have a lot more turnover.

Maybe it's just really, really hard to get guys to fight big guys--even if they themselves are big--because fighting big guys is just plain terrifying for everyone.
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Boxing used to be the most lucrative meal ticket for athletic people coming from dirt-poor backgrounds.

When Ali was making millions, baseball players made 40K average, vs. 3.31 million today. NBA and NFL players have seen similar explosions in compensation.

Less grueling, more glamorous and less brain-damaging options are available for someone who is particularly athletic that pay as well or better than boxing, so there's not as much talent choosing boxing or MMA vs other sports.
 
The UFC hw division is better then it has ever been. It was always scarce of talent with no dominant champion pretty much in its entire history. In the 2000s the UFC could claim to have the legit 200/205lb champion since Silva fought for the belt and lost then moved onto Pride to win the belt there. The HW division couldnt lay claim to linear champion and it was mostly accepted that Pride had the premiere HW divison. Now the UFC has the best talent beyond debate.

Its also kind of odd for someone to compare boxing to the UFC. Boxing is a sport. The UFC is a promotion+title comission. MMA is the sport they promote.
 
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