I’m pretty sure Mohammed Usman played football in college but he did not wrestle. I highly doubt he will have the impact his brother had. I see he got submitted by Sayles in the PFL last year and lost to Mayes in the past. Not too big for a HW either, 6’2, 240 lbs.
Bet he don’t crack the top 10.
If he starts working with his brother and Trevor Whitman in Colorado that would be a start (move from Dallas)
Welp, Blydes ended up getting another win and so did Romanov. The Tybura fight never happened.
What the UFC has done here is they took the established high ranked HWs in Stipe, Gane and Blaydes and they paired them with the GOAT LHW moving up in weight for the former champ and the other two top ranked HWs who have lost to Ngannou are each facing a surging contender climbing the ranks. The high ranked vet Lewis also gets another surging contender as well.
Hats off to the UFC here, they have booked almost all top 10 HWs in big fights that sense.
Jones vs Stipe- possibly September per Jones
Gane vs Tuivasa 9/3
Blaydes vs Aspinall 7/23
Lewis vs Pavlovich 7/30
Rozenstruik vs Volkov 6/4
I was saying UFC should use Stipe/Gane/Blaydes/Aspinall/Tuivasa/Jones for an interim title and it does not seem they are in a rush to do that.
They might do it with Stipe Jones, who knows.
What they did do though is they booked all six of those guys vs one another.
Not in any title picture but cool to see Oleynik get another W despite being 44, he is the 15th ranked UFC HW in the fightmatrix UFC rankings. #21 ranked Arlovski, another old vet at 43, got another W since the thread was created, now riding a four fight win streak. Arlovski vs Oleynik makes sense to me. They have a combined 135 MMA fights!
#18 Latifi meets #20 de Lima tonight.
Ngannou, Stipe, Gane, Blaydes, Volkov, Tybura and Lewis were like the existing base of the division.
Combine that with Pavlovich, Aspinall, Tuivasa, Romanov climbing the ranks while Jones is finally coming up to HW and I can’t remember the last time the UFC HW division was this good. Its been a long, long time. Glad to see most of the elite HWs booked to fight each other.
100%. The time is right for that Arlovski vs Oleinik fight.
43 yrs old vs 44 yrs old and both are coming off wins in the HW Division against much younger fighters
Makes sense on paper more than ever to match the Old Dogs against each other