On the Heavyweight Division: Lesnar, Fedor and What’s Next

The heavyweight division is a beautiful mess. There can be little dispute that the international heavyweight division is the best it has ever looked. In the wake of the first loss of an iconic fighter in Fedor Emelianenko (32-2-1 MMA, #2 IWMMAR) in almost a decade and the rise of a new heavyweight champion in Brock Lesnar (5-1 MMA, 4-1 UFC, #1 IWMMAR) with a victory that exposed a major problem in his standup.

Fedor Emelianenko realized his mortality taking on a fighter who was well below what many thought would constitute a serious threat to Emelianenko, and given the relatively recent loss that Fabricio Werdum (14-4-1 MMA, 2-2 UFC, #3 IWMMAR) has to potential title contender Junior Dos Santos (11-1 MMA, 5-0 UFC, #6 IWMMAR), there is some confusion about the standing of Werdum in the sport as a whole. Does his victory over the greatest heavyweight in the world make him among the greatest? Or does it simply mean he was in the right place at the right time? And what’s the significance of that.

Similarly, a less than impressive showing from Brock Lesnar, spending the first round being beaten by an aggressive interim champion with decidedly superior striking will undoubtedly lead to some debate about whether he can compete with future contenders. While Shane Carwin (12-1 MMA, 4-1 UFC, #5 IWMMAR) is not to be taken lightly as a striker, it’s hard to look at what he did to Lesnar and think that someone a little more capable at picking shots on a downed opponent, instead of continue to move like a steam roller as Lesnar turtles up, might have been able to finish the job. Cain Velasquez (8-0 MMA, 6-0 UFC, #4 IWMMAR) might not gas at the start of round two, and while I’m not convinced that Velasquez hits as hard as Carwin, his training at AKA has almost certainly prepared him to effectively defend the arm triangle, even from a monster like Lesnar.

Also, the freak athleticism of Lesnar remains a relatively unknown commodity. It does seem that the best approach is not to (as Lesnar did with Carwin) wait out the storm, as the end might never come. If he really is a cardio machine, it may be that even a smaller, less muscular fighter like Velasquez (who we might like to believe can go longer in a bout than a larger, thicker fighter like Carwin) can’t do much, as he’ll burn out faster than Lesnar on the basis of having similar cardio, but a heavier opponent, a bigger load, to have to move.

Divisions are at their best when there are a dozen good fighters in the top tier, and it seems that any one of those fighters can beat any other. Divisions with one legend often become weak and dull (as was the case for almost half a decade under Emelianenko and a relatively uninteresting UFC heavyweight division), but wide open fields make for great matchups. Even a fight like the upcoming contender’s bout between Junior Dos Santos and the unranked TUF-10 winner Roy Nelson (15-4 MMA, 2-0 UFC) makes for an interesting matchup, as Nelson has demonstrated in his last two fights that his hands are not to be underestimated, and his Brazilian jiu-jitsu credentials are well documented (as we know well that Dos Santos can be submitted, as that is the only way that he’s lost in his career). It’s true that styles make fights, but so does uncertainty, and knowing that both fighters have ways that they can win makes the fight worth watching.

If you add to the mix fighters who seem to present interesting challenges to the top guys in the division, all of a sudden the conversation opens up further.

Knowing what we know about Brock’s standup, does Junior Dos Santos pose a serious threat to Lesnar? Having seen an improvement in Lesnar’s jiu-jitsu, is the threat on the ground from Roy Nelson still particularly relevant? Can a tough, well-rounded fighter like Antonio Silva (14-2 MMA, #10 IWMMAR) pose a serious threat to the former king of the division, Emelianenko? Is Werdum truly a new fighter deserving of the top tier reputation he seems to be building? Is that reputation real enough that he can challenge the much larger, much improved Alistair Overeem (33-11-0-1 MMA, #7 IWMMAR) in a way that qualifies Werdum as the favorite?

I’m usually confident in my answer to questions like these. Surely, I would have been about a month ago. But this division has opened up, and the advantages that one fighter has over another are not as clear as they used to be, and it does seem that the introduction of fighters who I once thought were simply very good can lead to some incredibly competitive fights, provided those fighters, like Sergei Kharitonov (16-4 MMA) have shown the kind of marked improvement we’ve seen out of many of their competitors.

The division is confused. The standings of fighters in each division are bizarre and tough to assess, but that’s what makes experts become fans again, it’s what gives us reason to watch and see how it unfolds, and limits whatever speculation we have to be incredibly qualified by doubt and curiosity.