LHW Division=Best Ever??

Underground
1

Does anyone else agree with me that the current MMA Light Heavyweight division is the most stacked division of any weight class in the history of MMA, or even boxing for that matter?? To be honest I'm only 22 years old so I wasn't around for a lot of the older boxing generations but from what I've read about boxing in the past I still cant think of a weight class like the current LHW division. In one weight class you have (In no particular order)

Randy Couture
Tito Ortiz
Vitor Belfort
Wanderlei Silva
Chuck Lidell
Rampage Jackson
Vernon White
Yuki Kondo
Rogerio Noguiera
Arona
Jeremy Horn
and plenty of others I forgot to mention.
So has there ever been a better division??

2

Jeremy Horn is fighting Middleweight and I wouldn't put Vernon White up there.

LHW is deep, but I say Lightweight is the deepest. Followed by Welterweight. Then Light Heavyweight. Then Middleweight. Then Heavyweight.

3

170 and 185 are both insane right now. Kondo, Sakuraba and Horn (along with Bustamante) are rumored to be fighting at 185 in Pride if that GP gets going, so add them to Terrell, Tanner, Lindland, Chonan, Anderson Silva, Joe Riggs, Joe Doerkson, Salaverry, etc etc.

4

yeah, I was thinking about lightweight as well. you could put together an absolutely amazing 16-man lightweight tournament and still have to exclude guys that would have a decent shot of winning it

5

The only division where I somtimes have trouble coming up with a long list of big name guys is the 185 class and thw HW's.  155 170 and 205 are just stacked.  Especially the 55's and 70's IMO.

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6

Really only Heavyweight is lacking. Damn near all the other weight classes are stacked. Part of the problem there is too many damn injuries (Sylvia, Mir, Barnett for example). The other problem is that anyone who is borderline HW will usually cut mad weight and we now have a lot of fighters making the drop (or have already done so---Ian Freeman, Couture, Riggs to name just a few).

7

185 is absolutely insanely deep right now, so I'd have to put it first, then 155, then 170 ... followed by heavyweight, and then 205.

The main reason 185 is so strong right now is there are SEVERAL guys who are very worthy of a title shot, etc... There is a huge pack of guys clustered at the top of the middleweight class, while other classes have drop-offs after about the top 5 or 6 guys.

Let's see:

Evan Tanner

Dave Terrell

Rich Franklin

Matt Lindland

Ivan Salaverry

Trevor Prangley

Joe Riggs

Ryo Chonan

Nate Marquardt

Joey Villasenor

Denis Kang

Guys just a step behind now:

Anderson Silva

Lee Murray

Amar Suloev

Phil Baroni

Joe Doerkson

Robbie Lawler

Kazuo Misaki

Chris Leben

Daniel Acacio

Tony Fryklund

Ryuta Sakurai

Dave Loiseau

Jorge Rivera

Niko Vitale

Andrey Semenov

etc...

There is a ton of talented guys just below that level
as well.

8

ttt