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<\/a><\/p>\nUntil Tuesday, Tai Tuivasa, who is on a six-fight losing streak, and has not won a bout since 2021, was ranked No. 15! Derrick Lewis, who is 41 years old and 4-6 over his past 10 fights, is No. 11! Tallison Teixeira got ranked after one win in the promotion, and was still ranked after losing to Derrick Lewis in 35 seconds! Only one fighter in the Top 10 is under the age of 32. This is a weight class in freefall.<\/p>\n
And none of this even speaks to the quality of the heavyweight fights these days, both inside and outside of the rankings. Of the 150 Fight of the Night bonuses handed out over the past five years, only THREE have gone to heavyweight fights. And when you watch Almeida vs. Kuniev \u2014 ostensibly two of the 10 best heavyweights on Earth \u2014 it\u2019s easy to see why.<\/p>\n
The fact is that almost all sports improve over time. Current generations build on what previous generations did with more knowledge, better nutrition, and better training; heavyweight MMA is the exception. If you had a time machine and brought prime Randy Couture or Tim Sylvia to today, they\u2019d be at least a Top 5 heavyweight. That shouldn\u2019t happen!<\/p>\n
And there\u2019s no mystery as to why it\u2019s happening. Across sports, athletes go where the money is. If you\u2019re a big, athletic man, you can make more money and take less brain trauma in other professional sports, so you do that. Waldo Cortes-Acosta is the hottest thing at heavyweight right now, and he came to fighting in his 20s after washing out of professional baseball. Josh Hokit is one of the few heavyweight prospects on the roster, and he came to MMA after getting waived from the Arizona Cardinals practice team. The best MMA is getting are the guys who couldn\u2019t quite make it in other sports.<\/p>\n
And the UFC isn\u2019t even trying to solve the problem. In fact, they\u2019re doing the opposite. On Wednesday, the promotion cut ties with Almeida after that snoozer of a fight. He\u2019s the third ranked heavyweight the UFC has cut over the past year, joining Jairzinho Rozenstruik and Martin Buday. Worse still, they\u2019re not replacing these guys with up-and-coming talent. Rico Verhoeven was the sort of signing that could breathe some life into a failing division, and the multi-billion-dollar organization wouldn\u2019t open up the purse to sign him, losing him to boxing. Francis Ngannou remains one of the best fighters in the division, and the promotion has made it clear they will sign him when pigs fly. And they\u2019re even making Gable Steveson twiddle his thumbs on the regional circuit for now. Not to mention how the UFC handled the entire Jon Jones vs. Stipe Miocic farce. The promotion is simply content to let the division fall into disrepair.<\/p>\n
So why not just cut it? After all, there is precedent. In 2003, at UFC 41, B.J. Penn and Caol Uno fought to a draw for the vacant lightweight title, leaving the belt vacant. Instead of booking a trilogy or another matchup, the UFC simply decided to let the division go. There were a few more lightweight fights, but a champion was never crowned, and a year later, the division was scrapped altogether. It returned in 2006 at UFC 64, and since then has been one of the best divisions in the sport.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not saying heavyweight just needs a brief hiatus to become one of the premier weight classes, but honestly, what could it hurt? Stop spending time and resources on a dreadful weight class and focus on the great ones. Let PFL absorb all the heavyweights and then, in a few years, if PFL manages to bring the division back to life, you can swoop in and take it back. And if PFL doesn\u2019t, then it looks like you made the right choice!<\/p>\n
You tried to get rid of flyweight a few years ago, and that was an actual good weight class. At least when you send this one to the farm, no one will be too upset about it.<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t cut it. Build it back.<\/p>\n
Lee: To coin the most clich\u00e9 of clich\u00e9s: \u201cIt\u2019s always darkest before the dawn.\u201d<\/p>\n
If there was ever a sign that the heavyweight division was snakebitten, it came at UFC 321, an event that was supposed to be the coronation of Tom Aspinall. Yes, things were going poorly for the large lad collective already, with several memorably terrible fights booked in 2025 (Hamdy Abdelwahab vs. Mohammed Usman and Denzel Freeman vs. Marek Bujlo walked so that Kuniev vs. Almeida could lumber aimlessly), but Aspinall\u2019s first undisputed title defense against Ciryl Gane was supposed to bring balance to the force, as it were, and allow us all to move on from the regrettable Jon Jones championship \u201creign.\u201d<\/p>\n
A few fingers to the eyes later, Aspinall\u2019s chance to assert himself as The Baddest Man on the Planet was over before it began, and we were plunged deeper into chaos. We don\u2019t even know if Aspinall will fight again.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s no solving the lack of financial incentive (yet) that prevents top-tier big men from actual sports from entering MMA, but that doesn\u2019t mean there can\u2019t be development from within. From a technique standpoint, the mixing of the martial arts continues to evolve at a rapid pace, even if the results tend to be less pleasing than the outlaw era that a lot of us fans grew up in. Your average fighter is just better, and while that hasn\u2019t proven true for the heavyweights recently, I believe that there may be a trickle-up of skill advancement on the way (they\u2019ll be dancing around like lightweights in no time!). Heavyweights have been able to get away with mediocrity for too long, and if the division is truly in danger, it will adapt to survive. Perhaps we are seeing the genesis of that change with the likes of Waldo Cortes-Acosta, Valter Walker, Mario Pinto, and yes, Josh Hokit, all of whom have shown flashes of sustainable relevance.<\/p>\n
Then there\u2019s the Gable Steveson cloud looming over the roster. Steveson was destined to become an MMA fighter after completing the Brock Lesnar post-amateur wrestling speed run by trying out for an NFL team and flirting with a WWE career, and now all signs point to him becoming (sorry, Brock) \u201cThe Next Big Thing\u201d in the UFC. Judging by advance hype, a large swath of fans have Steveson penciled in for a UFC championship sometime in 2027.<\/p>\n
Look, there\u2019s a void of compelling talent right now, to the point that a beloved top 10 contender was just callously released\u2014yes, I\u2019m talking about Jailton Almeida!\u2014and most heavyweight fight announcements are met with the kind of anticipation reserved for a Tommy Wiseau project as opposed to a Hollywood blockbuster (did I mention Hamdy vs. Mo?), but for now, let\u2019s ride out this storm and have a few laughs together. Because eventually the UFC division will rise again and, like the great Ben Rothwell, the big boys will have the last one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Great Divide is a recurring feature here at MMA Fighting in which two of our staff debate…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":477531,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,1347,785,85,787,1396],"class_list":["post-477530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-latest-news","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=477530"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477530\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/477531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=477530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=477530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=477530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}