I’ve been saying this for years. The greatest heavyweights in the history of boxing are under 230 lbs at their very best.
Dempsey
Tunney
Louis
Schmeling
Walcott
Charles
Patterson
Frazier
Ali
Holyfield
Tyson
Even Wilder would all have easily made a 205 weight limit.
There is a diminishing return in size at some point for most men
True. Some of these guys used to be boxers in past eras. But now many of the heavyweights in boxing are fat and short for Heavyweight.
That said, we had a Pro-bowler in Greg Hardy that was nothing special in MMA.
When I watch young Tyson’s heavyweight fights, I see a lot of athletic looking heavyweights, much leaner than guys now.
Derek Chisora, Dillian Whyte, Andy Ruiz, Luis Ortiz etc. All soft midsections
Some good points. I think the athleticism in combat is overstated in importance.
Otherwise like you said Greg Hardy wouldn’t lose to some of these guys he’s lost to. I’m talking guys who are nowhere near his NFL Caliber athleticism AND who have less combat experience than Greg has. No excuse to lose those fights yet he is.
Also another good point. Many LHWs are actually just HWs who cut weight when others don’t because they don’t feel they have to just to have a size advantage. Even the ones that do cut to LHW are really only LHW for the seconds they are on the scale and then they go right back to HW territory for the fight.
Because those guys were growing up in the 60s and 70s when boxing was close to the #1 sport in America. That’s what kids were growing up wanting to do and the cream rose to the top, hence the great 80s and 90s HWs.
Now football and basketball are dominant and besides being the most popular, big or tall kids are especially pushed to play them due to size being so important in them, so naturally that’s where the best athletes of size end up.
Yep.
A true HW in MMA though has always been thought of as a guy who really can’t cut to 205 if he wanted to. Think the guys that cut to 265.
Of course LHW’s cut, eight year old wrestlers cut, everyone does, just the way it is with weight classes.
If you say that many LHWs are actually HWs who cut then you might as well say that many FLW’s are FW’s and LW’s that cut.
Now on to the topic of titles. What does being the ONE HW champ mean in MMA?
ONE barely has any HW’s under contract and only five of their HW fighters are ranked in the top 100 in the world when you look at the fightmatrix rankings.
This is why fans who say ONE is better than UFC are out to lunch. ONE has only like 5% of the top 800 fighters in men’s MMA. Fans who say ONE is better than UFC must really have an axe to grind with Dana. ONE is cool for what they are but they are no UFC when it comes to MMA.
Buchecha would have a very solid chance of beating anyone at heavyweight and Malykhin is a very legit fighter. I admit that while I love the UFC, I definitely have more fun most times watching ONE in recent years. I don’t prefer either over the other, but I enjoy the difference. I appreciate the approach of getting multiple high level combat sports under one umbrella.
Bader has become a legitimate, long reigning champion for Bellator and iI think that PFL has a few really good heavyweights. Arguably the best overall in terms of depth.
ONE has Buchecha booked vs Reug Reug next. Guess they are setting him up for a title shot vs Malykhin next. Thats my hope.
Bader has done great for himself in that Bellator HW division. No denying that.
I can’t agree with you at all that PFL is the best in terms of depth. Not compared tot he UFC.
Look at the fightmatrix HW rankings, PFL has 1 of the top 25 HW’s, UFC has 17.
UFC is the king of depth when it comes to MMA.
This is the problem with Bellator and ONE at HW when it comes to depth.
Instead of having say Bader able to fight with the top 25 HW’s he is over in Paris headlining vs 50 year old Kongo in a title fight nobody wants to see while Buchecha is over in ONE about to fight a Senegal wrestler with terrible striking. KSW just resurrected Todd Duffee from the MMA graveyard to compete in their last title fight and it went as expected.
Meanwhile UFC has Jones, Gane, Pavlovich, Volkov, Almeida, Spivak, Aspinall, Tybura, Ivanov etc… at least competing vs one another in a somewhat functioning HW division.
HW MMA is certainly nothing compared to 2009-2011 in the Strikeforce/UFC era when Fedor, Big Nog, Crocop, Barnett, Brock, Carwin, Overeem, JDS, Werdum, Mir, Cain, DC etc… were all around in two and then one promotion.
This logic would make Fedor a true LHW considering he was 235 with a gut. Even CC weighed in at 220 many times.
Pretty much everyone is a division lower than their true weight class, which ONE’s weight cutting rule proved.
Fedor has always been thought to likely be a true LHW. I don’t get the controversy.
Like a lot of other LHW’s by modern standards, Fedor chose to compete at HW but nobody confused him for Semmy Schilt, Struve, Lesnar or Ngannou.
Ah ok. We’re just looking at “true” weight classes from different perspectives. I’ve always considered “true” class to be the one closest to their natural weight. To you it’s the lowest weight they can get to.
I agree with your definition of a True HW but I also think that HW even when it has the silly weight cap of 265 lbs still has a range of 60 lbs which is 3x that of the next divisions largest range.
This means that you have more of a range of the types of HWs that you don’t have at the other classes like these 4 if I had to group them and someone could even go further in detail but this is kind of how I see it…
206 lbs - 225 lbs - these are the HWs that could be true LHWs since they could cut but they are also the ones I am talking about that usually have more balls if you will, meaning their skills are good enough to compete with people where they don’t need to have the largest size advantage possible.
225 lbs - 245 lbs - these are the HWs in the middle that technically like a Malakyin could cut the weight to 205 lbs but does that mean they actually perform as good as they would without dehydrating themselves to the limit? Everyone is different so it’s an X factor based on body type and ability to cut and still perform etc…
245 lbs - 265 lbs - these are the HWs who can’t really cut to 205 lbs but are not necessarily maxing out the weight class
Fighters who have to cut to 265 lbs - guys like Brock who walk around closer to 300 lbs and need to cut to the max limit meaning they are 60 lbs over the low limit for the class
These weight ranges allow for many different types of HWs which is different than the other weight classes especially when you only have 10 bs to work with in most of them. It’s just not as drastic and doesn’t allow for this range of weight types. I think there are arguments that groups 2-4 are HWs just different types with only group 4 fitting your example of a True HW.
To expand on that post, what differentiates HW is that it really is the only weight class that actually has weight variations on the scale in modern MMA.
Meaning that from all the other classes even a FLW weighs in at within 1 lb of his opponents rate right around the max of the class limit. Same with the other classes up through LHW.
But HW you can have a Group 1 Fighter like a Randy Couture fight a Group 4 Fighter like Brock Lesnar where there is an extreme Range in the Division on the actual scale weight.
And what I meant by original comments are that you can have a Group 1 Fighter who decides they want to cut down to LHW to have the greatest size advantage unlike some of the greatest fighters who can come in around their natural weight and fight all comers. Those are the ones I was talking about that are only LHWs for the seconds they are on the scale then they go back up to Group 1 or even up to Group 2 HW territory.
This is different than the other weight classes that would only have around a 3 lb difference in Range compared to 20 lbs in each Group.
If the current UFC that is on wasn’t such a slow Card with 7 fights out of 8 going to Decision then I probably wouldn’t have spent so long ranting so I apologize in advance lol
Its not about the roster is about the fights, the ruleset and enforcement of the rules.
ONE is all about putting on great fights. UFC is all about winning at all costs. Exemplified by the “GOAT” of UFC’s striking game is built around eyepokes and the threat of eyepokes.
You cant watch a UFC card without atleast a few nut shots or faked nut shots either. Shockingly to me, they are very rare in ONE.
But you are solely focused on the roster.
But yes its true, UFC has the far better roster (as far as pure MMA fights go).
But its also true that if ONE had the same roster the quality of fights would be far better in ONE for the reasons mentioned above.
Nemkov moving to HW now as well. Dropping his LHW title to pursue the HW gold.
I’ve never understood why anyone thinks the distance between classes should be constant.
It’s relative, it should be a percentage of body weight.
For instance: 155 to 170 is about a 10% increase.
170 to 187 would be the next 10%
206 is the next 10%
The weight class progressions on the upper end make more sense than they do on the lower end.
I never understood why people say 185 to 205 is such a big jump.
But 265 is stupid. Just make it 225 and 250.
There have been 2 champs who couldn’t cut to 250 and it’s no coincidence that they are they are the least skilled champions in UFC history.