It just occurred to me that true LHW’s now hold all the major HW titles. The sport has seen a lot of true LHW’s do very well at HW. From Vovchanchyn, Randy and Fedor, to Rumble, DC and now finally…Jones. I do consider Pavlovich the people’s champ right now because he is the active HW out there winning but thats another story and another issue, Jones has the belt. The point is the last three HW title fights, interim or standard, were all three title fights won by true LHWs, not HWs.
5’11 and 12-0 Malykhin recently KOed Ridder to become the ONE LHW champ and he was already int. HW champ and is now the double champ and is 3-0 since Bhullar last fought so I consider Malykhin real HW champ of ONE. Last year he actually competed and won the HW and then the LHW titles while Bhullar didn’t compete. Bhullar has not competed in over two years and should have been stripped of his title.
Anyway…Jones just moved up from LHW and finally competed at HW and won the vacant UFC title.
Over in Bellator, LHW Bader has held the HW title for five years.
Add Malykhin to the list of LHW’s who have done big things at HW. I’d love to see Malykhin vs Buchecha in a future ONE title fight. Malykhin is stuck waiting for Bhullar to return and Buchecha is booked to fight “Reug Reug” Kane in August and hopefully Malykhin and Buchecha both win and it sets up a title fight between them.
The 2018 PFL HW champ, Philipe Lins and the 2021 PFL HW champ, Bruno Cappelozza, are also true LHW’s who have won PFL titles at HW in the past though PFL does have a true HW as their most recent champ.
I said for a long time that good 205ers are wasting time cutting to 205. Most are 225 and would be better off to gain 10 pounds of muscle and just fight at that Cain weight.
On the idea that 235-250 seems to be the optimal range for hw anyway and the skill at hw is lower than 205
Gus and OSP getting mauled by real heavyweights changed my mind for a while. But the recent trend seems to be confirming my original hypothesis
Its also a factor of size and strength being an issue until its not. For example, Anthony Pettis was smart to compete for most of his career at LW. Competing at 155 lbs was the best place for him and he won a world title there. When he tried to cut too much and go to 45, he beat Oliveira who was also probably cutting too much but then he turned around and got trashed by Max. Returns to 55 for some fights and then jumps up to 170 lbs and KO’s Stephen Thompson.
Someone is always capable of winning big fights when fighting up in weight and giving up size and strength. We have seen it 1000’s of times. Its especially true at HW though. LHW’s are just usually so much faster, have better cadio and are more technical as a whole and the talent pool is just so much deeper.
When you get elite fighters cutting to make HW than it’ll be difficult for those guys to beat them but HW boxing (i know different) was dominated by guys in the 6-6’3 210-220 lb range for the longest time. Sure recently some huge monsters have been dominanting for last little bit but that’s very recent in boxing history.
Interesting to note Gable Steveson just won the Olympics and he is only 6’1 and usually wrestled around 245 lbs.
HW’s have certainly gotten bigger in boxing, wrestling, MMA etc… over the past century and athletes in general cut a lot more weight at all classes outside HW but I don’t think the trend of LHW’s often wrecking HW’s is going away just because of the trend of HW’s getting bigger.
Malykhin completely ouclassed Bhullar until Bhullar just gassed out and got the fight stopped.
Bhullar is probably the worst HW champ in big promotion history. Wins the title from a guy who was 45 and then does not fight for two years. Returns talking about superfights in India vs Ngannou and then looks horrible the whole time vs Malykhin.
Like I said before, Malykhin vs Buchecha is the fight to make. Bhullar is not one of the top 20 HW’s in the world.
Malykhin is a HW and I think ONE has different weight classes so their LHW Class that he fought in once when he beat De Ridder he still weighed around 225 lbs.
Interesting observation though we are definitely in a drought period for quality fighters that are true HWs in the sport across all promotions
Shit, I wasn’t even thinking about ONE bumping up LHW to 225 but now that you mention it, nope like I said, Malykhin can make 205 lb, he just called out De Ridder for his MW belt in October. Said he wants three belts. He already beat him for the LHW belt.
Guess he plans to make 205.
Malykhin is only 5’11, he can make 205 but I don’t know about how the hydration testing will go unless he gets rid of a lot of muscle for this one.
Malykhin weighed in at 240 lbs for this fight today so maybe he could cut that 35 lbs like you said and still perform well since he isn’t that tall at 5’11 but I don’t know if just cause he could make the weight if we can call him a true LHW yet. We will see how he performs first if he does.
Maybe he will cut the weight easy and look even better. Should be interesting and at 225 lbs he looked really good and physically better than he did today at 240 imo. But at 205 he could lose chin and power and who knows how it will affect his body, strength, cardio etc… I like his ambition in going for 3 Belts though and look forward to seeing it if he does.
The best large athletes play football or basketball. It’s rare to see a 6’4" 250 or 260 pound in shape athletic dude in MMA. Every d-1 college football and basketball programs is filled with big tall athletic dudes.
That’s true and makes sense why the best especially American athletes don’t choose combat sports over the NBA or NFL but there are still other Countries and places like Russia that don’t have those leagues and instead have more of a focus on things like Wrestling or Boxing than we do.
I think the problem for 205ers who move up to heavyweight is that they don’t look like they have trained and prepared for a heavyweight fight. They end up looking like they just starting eating pasta every day and stopped doing roadwork.
Most LHWs are true HWs. 230-235, which is what they cut from, is the ideal HW weight. I read somewhere that even Anthony Cassar, who beat Gable Steveston, plans to drop down.
