I actually don’t know if this is true. Couture was doing very well, and could have probably done great in a rematch. He literally slipped a punch by just not enough by a couple of inches and that’s how he lost. Lesnar looked bewildered at points against the cage.
Couture was never the man though at that time, right place and right time against worst heavyweight champ they ever had after being retired.
Add 15 lbs to the ceiling of cruiserweight so HW can just be kept HW and small HW’s can just decide whether they want to compete at cruiserweight or go to HW like they always have?
Oh yeah, Brock for sure had a great base but lots of fighters with the same base as Brock didn’t do at lighter weights what he did at HW. Look at WW Ed Ruth for example, 3x NCAA champ and U.S. freestyle world team member…went 6-0 over a couple years in Bellator and then went 2-3 when he took a step up in comp over the the next couple years. As a WW and MW, he never had the sort of size and strength advantage in MMA that Brock had. Had the elite wrestling, but size and strength can’t be dismissed when talking about Brock.
Look at the 6’8, 275 lb purple belt Ricardo Morais who had limited MMA training and no fights and went out and won the 32-man International Absolute Fighting Championship tournament in 1995 where he won five fights over two days. Ilyukhin, the sambo fighter that Morais beat in the finals was 5’9 and 205 lbs. Moraes also took 2nd at ADCC in 1998. Not a lot of purple belts could have done what he did in NHB and ADCC but there was almost no 6’8 275 lb monsters in BJJ and NHB at the time.
I dont like that, because people talk about Heavyweights as the baddest man on the planet and 205-225 is the traditional heavyweight size. Let the 250+ pound monsters be super heavyweight
For branding purposes and acknowledgement, I prefer heavyweight and superheavyweight