Try to leave nostalgia out of it, is there a division that got worse?

[leatherneck]

@leatherneck
Only thing Ngannou has over any top 50 HW in the ufc is a puncher's chance actually. He gasses, has no td, has no ground game, and his boxing is very technically sound.
But the thing he hits so hard that this puncher's chance made him the N1 contender. I would favor him over anyone in the HW except for Miocic and maybe Cormier.
Ngannou vs Prime Fedor is 70-30 imo

you should start by getting a roster of who is in the UFC.

Cormier isnt, and neither is Werdum

your original post said "no one from Pride would make the UFC top 5" then you went on to admit 2 would, and i didnt even have to argue.

the truth is, several of them are much better than any UFC heavyweight except maybe Ngannou.

 

[Huligani]

Only HW and LHW as others have said. LHW in the 2000s was full of younger, better athletes and much better strikers in the late 2000s (and Jones cleaned most of those guys out too). Same for HW in the 2000s. Both of these became the old man division. LHW is starting to get interesting again at least.

 

[Bend NvR Break]

LHW is dead

 

[leatherneck]

@leatherneck
I said that indeed but then you asked me to back up my statement by naming 5 HW that are better than Fedor, so that's what I did.
Either you're a complete troll and I'm just biting the hook or you are such hardcore Fedor fan that you can deal with the fact many HWs are better than him, so you try to play on words and to formulate questions in a way that suits you.
To make this simple and to put an end to this dialogue of the deaf, here are the HWs I think would beat Prime Fedor, regardless of orgs etc.
Miocic
Cormier
Lesnar
Ngannou
Blaydes
Overeem
Werdum

Many of them are pure UFC fighters and still fighting for the UFC, so I think the narrative that "Pride HW division was the best" is completely false, since their most dominant fighter would get beaten by a couple guys who aren't even champs in an era said to suck... (which I don't agree on)

im gonna try with you 1 last time-

1. your original point was "Pride HWs couldnt make the Top 5 in todays UFC"
2. i just picked 1 of them at random, Fedor.
3. you said Werdum in Strikeforce was better than Fedor. ok, great. he wasnt better than Fedor in Pride, and Werdum fought there.
4. you also picked Overeem, who also fought in Pride.
5. youve settled on 8 HWs you apparently think are the best,

- only 3 are current UFC heavyweights
- 3 of them were also in Pride.

i am watching you destroy your own argument.

and no, im not some rabid Fedor fan.

i would pick a few HWs to beat him prime vs prime, but i still think his resume is the best for now.

as ive said before, the post strikeforce UFC was the best HW division there was:

Cain
Brock
Carwin
Overeem
Mir
JDS
Werdum
Cormier
Barnett
Bigfoot

that was a wrecking crew, and the Stipe and Ngannou prob wouldnt be in the Top 3-4

 

[Darkart]

They have all gotten worse since drug testing started. Best fights were in Texas or Indian reservations, dudes juiced to the fucking gills on androgens plus unlimited blood doping.

Why aren't we seeing many 50 60 HR hitters in baseball? The baseball hitters have got worse for the same reasons as MMA fighters aren't as savage hitters as they used to be.

 

[Sad Dad]

HW and LHW.
The mere fact that you have Derrick Lewis as one of the top ranked HW, along with some fossils like Oleynik, and few guys who have been fighting since last century/ early 2000s (Overeem, Hunt not long ago) as serious contenders is the biggest indicator of "evolution" of that division.
Not to mention that the champ is a part time 38 y.o. fighter, the guy who KO'd him 2 years ago was a 41 y.o. 5'10" fatso, and the current first contender is the guy whose punching technique puts Prime Bob Sapp to shame.

Stipe is a fucking volunteer, he’s not a part time fighter and he hasn’t been anything like that for like 5 years. Commentators and analysts that are fighters actually have two jobs but no one ever calls them part time fighters.

 

[NicholasJBasile]

Serious question, do you belive there is any division in the ufc that got worse with time? People say the heavyweight division got worst but did it really? Its pretty clear that the hw division of today doesn't have the star power that it did before, but skillwise i would say although it didn't get much better compared to some other divisions, it isn't worst.
So is there a division you belive it got worst when it comes to skills? And what division it is.

I have been pretty open about my disagreement with folks' distaste for the heavyweight division. I personally don't feel any of the divisions have declined; the game has evolved at a pretty high pace, albeit slower and slower each year, but still evolving nonetheless. I remember when folks started throwing calf kicks. Every few months I'm still noticing new techniques.

 

[Bowel-forged Stool]

I think the top 3 weight classes got USADA’d. Without the juice, it makes more sense to cut down since you can’t blow up.

 

[Shaddows]

Serious question, do you belive there is any division in the ufc that got worse with time? People say the heavyweight division got worst but did it really? Its pretty clear that the hw division of today doesn't have the star power that it did before, but skillwise i would say although it didn't get much better compared to some other divisions, it isn't worst.
So is there a division you belive it got worst when it comes to skills? And what division it is.

HW is terrible in all aspects when compared with the "golden days".
LHW as well.
MW is not. IMHO it is about the same.
WW is about the same.
LW got better.
FW and below all got better IMO.

 

[chinarice]

Oh man don't play with the words, DC has been retired for one month, that doesn't count.
In 6 months I will consider him being from yesterday.
Oh I took a look at the rankings and it reminded me I forgot to Blaydes, who would also beat Fedor IMO

HW is trash. Fedor in his prime could beat Stipe.

Old AF PRIDE fossils still in the top10 in 2020 is just sad. PRIDE went under 13 years ago... why are PRIDE fighters still in the top10? That shouldn't be the case.

 

[Taric]

The truth is that you can't get a objective answer here. Sherdog is full of nostalgic pride fans who can't accept the fact that the sport has evolved. You would get a more objective and more informed answer on reddit or even Twitter.

Some people here really think that the sport hasn't evolved since the late 2000s. Even though sherdoggers love to call themselves "hardcore fans", but the reality is that their knowledge of MMA is worse than the casuals on Instagram.

The HW and LHW divisions being worse than they previously used to be has absolutely nothing to do with PRIDE or nostalgia.

In 2012 the UFC HW rankings were:
#1 JDS (age 28)
#2 Cain (age 29)
#3 Overeem (age 32)
#4 Werdum (age 34)
#5 Cormier (age 33)
#6 Mir (age 33)
#7 Nogueira (age 36)
#8 Barnett (age 34)
#9 Bigfoot (age 32)
#10 Hunt (age 38)

You can easily argue 8 out of 10 of the greatest HWs in the history of MMA were in the same division fighting each other all between the ages of 28-34. The current HW division is an embarrassment in comparison.

Current UFC HW rankings:
#1 Stipe (age 38)
#2 Ngannou (age 33)
#3 Blaydes (age 29)
#4 Jairzinho Rozenstruk (lol)
#5 Lewis (age 35)
#6 Overeem (age 40... 21st year as a professional fighter)
#7 Alexander Volkov (age 31)
#8 JDS (age 36)
#9 Walt Harris (lol)
#10 Shamil Abdurakhimov (lol)

If you think this HW divisions stacks up with older divisions, even within the UFC itself, you're delusional.

Just to illustrate the point, 9 out of 10 of the fighters on the first list are black belts in BJJ or high level submission grapplers... The only fighters that are black belts/high level submission grapplers on the second list are the fighters that were on the first list lol

 

[MMAart]

LW is the only division where I can definitively say has gotten better.

WW is a close second, but I think prime GSP and Hendricks could beat a lot of the current top WW's, so I'm not too sure it has gotten better.

The current HW division is not better than the former HW divison, where the was prime Cain, JDS (who still beat Stipe after he got smashed by Cain), Bigfoot, Browne, Overeem, Brock, Carwin, Hunt (who smashed the Struve that KO'ed Stipe).

 

[daniel san]

LHW has gone up and down. The division was the most exciting back in Pride or when Shogun/Rampage/Machida/Iceman etc. were champ in the UFC. By far the best fights and most stacked relative to the average skill level. Then Jones/DC/Rumble/Gus came along, actual LHWs, that started dominating the older generation of LHWs that were basically bloated MWs compared to the new elite. This is when LHW peaked in terms of actual skill. But then we lost Jones and DC, Rumble may return and Gus is mentally gone. Instead we have Jan as the champ, one of the most likeable yet weakest champs in recent times and the division is once more filled with MWs.

As for HW, maybe Ngannou and Miocic would have dominated the HW scene 10 years ago, but other than those most of the elite have been in the division for a decade or more. And as a previous poster pointed out, if someone like Black Beast is highly ranked (though he should be ranked way lower), you know the division is terrible.

 

[pankrat]

LHW has gone up and down. The division was the most exciting back in Pride or when Shogun/Rampage/Machida/Iceman etc. were champ in the UFC. By far the best fights and most stacked relative to the average skill level. Then Jones/DC/Rumble/Gus came along, actual LHWs, that started dominating the older generation of LHWs that were basically bloated MWs compared to the new elite. This is when LHW peaked in terms of actual skill. But then we lost Jones and DC, Rumble may return and Gus is mentally gone. Instead we have Jan as the champ, one of the most likeable yet weakest champs in recent times and the division is once more filled with MWs.

As for HW, maybe Ngannou and Miocic would have dominated the HW scene 10 years ago, but other than those most of the elite have been in the division for a decade or more. And as a previous poster pointed out, if someone like Black Beast is highly ranked (though he should be ranked way lower), you know the division is terrible.

With such a dominant champion as Jones UFC didnt invest that much in LHW contenders. You have Glover still outgrappling his way to a tittle eliminator while Davis, Bader and Corey are doing it better elsewhere.
Generally speaking I think the top talent is not better today than 5-10 years ago at the heaviest divisions.