The HW division is a perfect example of the sport-evolution fallacy

Fight Professor said:
Weight cutting is a big reason for that. Some fighters like Poatan can fight at MW while 20 years ago they would have been HW fighters.

Imagine Jones, Alex, Jiri, younger Glover, Reyes, prime Gus… fighting at HW.
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Lesnar, Cain and Hunt Destroy These Guys only Jones it's Dangerous because he's the GOAT.

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Man Lesnar can Smash Glover and Jiri and wouldn't be beautiful.
 
What about FW? Guys like TKZ and Ortega fighting for the title and being considered ELITE somehow, even better than Aldo's competition
 
Juice them up like back in PRIDE and let’s see how things go.

In the early 2010’s the UFC’s heavyweights were actually pretty damn good with prime JDS, Cain, Werdum, Stipe, DC, Travis Browne was looking like a good prospect before Edmund, Carwin was great, Hunt was great. It was pretty decent.
 
With 260lbs men fighting, it's always going to be less about the technical details.
 
krelianx said:
Yes, the sport generally evolves, and the talent overall improves in time. But from this people conclude that every division now is necessarily composed of superior talent than before. That is not always the case.

HW is the paradigm example of that. Lots of people went ahead to claim that guys like Gane, Volkov, Tuivasa, Blaydes, Almeida and Lewis are "next generation talent". In truth, the HW division is in a pretty dismal shape, worse than I can remember it being since the Tim Sylvia days, and certainly a lot worse than after the Strikeforce and Pride acquisitions.

Nothing Volkov does Semmy Schilt did not do better; nothing Tuivasa does did Mark Hunt not do better. Almeida does nothing we haven't seen from guys like Arona, Filho, or Werdum.

Guys like Cyril Gane, who is not even a particularly accomplished kickboxer, is seen to be somehow superior to people like Overeem, Schilt, or Mirko, who were far more accomplished.
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HW has probably had the least advancement because as other have mentioned, athletic big men go to high paying sports.

That said guys like Cain, DC, Jones even Brock are superior athletes to HWs in say Pride fighters 10-15 years ago.

This doesnt negate the quantum leap in skill and atheticism we've seen in lower weight classes
 
You're not wrong. I've been watching for nearly twenty years now and the division has definitely regressed over that period of time.
 
There is zero doubt HW is laughable compared to those earlier times, and the same can be said of LHW.

The whole "talented big guys don't choose this sport" is totally irrelevant to the point. If we were to hypothesize that this idea were true, it would have always been true. Remember big guys ALWAYS had better opportunities, but we still had a lot of good big guys at one time.

The point is, HWs and LHWs have devolved overall during the last 5-7 years or so. They have not gotten better, nor have they stayed the same.
 
ermac88 said:
HW has probably had the least advancement because as other have mentioned, athletic big men go to high paying sports.

That said guys like Cain, DC, Jones even Brock are superior athletes to HWs in say Pride fighters 10-15 years ago.

This doesnt negate the quantum leap in skill and atheticism we've seen in lower weight classes
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I agree with that statement. Although I also believe that there are a few additional factors in addition to top big athletes finding alternative avenues.

1) Superlatively athletic heavyweights are a small minority of the population.
2) Even smaller still are those with the psychology required to become professional fighters.

But one huge factor, I think, is the following one.

3) Many of the most skilled HWs currently come from Eastern European countries. There are currently many highly skilled, huge heavyweights that compete abroad, and are not signed to the UFC. There are several reasons for this, but among them a big factor is that the UFC very actively is looking for exciting fighters beyond grappling technicians, and they do not want people who might be insular to a broader audience; thus someone like Ankalaev is having a hard time building himself up back to a title shot. Merab will likely face a similar situation, and maybe even Umar.

In short, they don't want a monopoly of Eastern European wrestler champions across all divisions. We know what happened with boxing HW under the dominance of the Klitschko brothers... unfortunately, entertainment comes first, and the just bleed crew find it difficult to relate to guys like Islam, Khabib, Merab, etc. Guys like Khamzat who are very violent and aggressive are there, but they are not the norm. We have seen influx of talent from Eastern Europe, but it is still surprisingly relatively sparse relative to what's out there. Even then, their performance track records are beyond all other demographics.
 
Be prepared to see Gane KTFO. Alistair is an old man, but in his prime was literal K1 WGP champ, in a time when talented giants walked the land in kickboxing. Gane doesn't have the power to stop Alistair, nor the tricks to keep himself at distance Vs Ubereem at all.
 
Eh...not really. I see people say this about boxing as well and it's usually just an over anaylsis of technical ability, speed and coordination.

Like yes, all three of those things are incredibly important, but the reason why fighters from older eras look more coordinated and technical is because they were much smaller.

There were less weight classes back in the day and heavyweights are simply bigger now. Bigger guys are not as technical as smaller guys. They're also not as fast or coordinated which makes them look less technical than they actually are.

I think in the boxing section someone said how Ali, Frazier and "even" Holyfield/Tyson look so much more faster than Tyson Fury or whatever and it's like...3/4 of those guys are basically cruiserweights. Fury is 6'9, 280 pounds or something along those likes.

Are the heavyweights of the old way more technical than someone like Vadim Nemkov? They seem about the same to me, if not Vadim is probably more technical than Fedor (Fedor is underrated as an athlete, he actually gets out of a lot of bad situations just because he is so fast and hits hard - he is more athletic than Nemkov but not more technical).
 
Poirierfan said:
Gane might not be more accomplished than Overeem, but he's a legit undefeated Muay Thai fighter. Those tin belts don't mean as much as people think. I'd put Gane up against a prime Overeem in a kickboxing match any day of the week.
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Being undefeated as a HW muay thai fighter is like a manlet winning a midget competition

If one thinks the talent in HW MMA or HW boxing is bad..... They look stacked compared to HW muay thai. There is ZERO talent in that division.
 
I totally see where you’re coming from, but I’ve never heard or read anyone talk about Derrick Lewis as a next-generation talent. Was that actually a thing?
 
It's the roids. The HW division peaked before USADA came in. Post USADA is when DC was able to win a belt. It's also when bisping was able to win a belt at MW.
 
Man it was good when we had Mir, JDS, Werdum, Cain, Carwin, young Stipe, Brock, Gonzaga, Nog, Hunt, and so on, all knocking about at the same time.
 
LZD said:
Man it was good when we had Mir, JDS, Werdum, Cain, Carwin, young Stipe, Brock, Gonzaga, Nog, Hunt, and so on, all knocking about at the same time.
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Browne, Barnett, Arlovski, Overeem, Cormier...
Now we have Derrick Lewis, Tai Tuivasa, and Cyril Gane.
 
Hdfi said:
Volkov = much better TDD than Semmy Schilt.
Tuivasa = better kicks/knees/cardio than Hunt.
Jailton = better takedowns than Arona, Filho, Werdum.
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<TrumpWrong1>
 
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