It sounds nearly impossible now, but there was a time, perhaps when it was de rigueur to frequent the Vegas buffet lines, that the big boys excited the UFC fan base.
Back on May 26, 2012, the UFC even went so far as to roll out an all-heavyweight main card for UFC 146. Granted, not every fighter was a superstar (Lavar Johnson, it might be remembered, was far closer to a felon), but the result was that all five fights were finished in two rounds or less. In fact, the entire main card featured 21:50 minutes of fight time, which is less than one single title fight that goes the distance.
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That’s because the word “heavyweight” was synonymous with seismic happenings.
It gives me a pang to look back. Poor Stipe Miocic, who put away Shane del Rosario (RIP) at the 3:14 mark of the second round that night, was the poke of the bunch. It took him a little time to get rolling. Junior dos Santos finished Frank Mir in the main event a full 10 seconds quicker, and Cain Velasquez annihilated Antonio “Bigfoot” Silva, who was still basking in the glow of having upset Fedor Emelianenko a year earlier. That one only lasted a little over half a round.
I got to thinking about those old days while Rizvan Kuniev posted Jailton Almeida into the drowsy links at the Apex this past weekend, pouring his sludge into a helpless man’s soul. I’d say that I’d never seen such an existential dilemma playing out to scorecards before if I hadn’t just watched Tai Tuivasa’s fight with Tallison Teixeira a week before. In that one, two meaty specimens sunk in a slow burble of mud over 15 minutes, belching the alphabet dyingly into each other’s ears.
What the hell happened to the UFC’s heavyweight division? When did it become such a blight on the UFC’s regularly scheduled programming? The bigger-bodied fighters used to carry with them a premonition of bad things to come in the best way possible, but now watching heavyweights is like watching a gastrointestinal tract digest a calzone.
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In boxing, there has always been a romance to the heavyweight fight. It’s been a constant baton pass from generation to generation. During the “golden era,” names like Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier, Ken Norton, George Foreman and Earnie Shavers roamed the ring. Before then we had Rocky Marciano and Joe Louis and Sonny Liston, and after them we had Mike Tyson, Evander Holyfield and Lennox Lewis. Today you still have Tyson Fury and Oleksandr Usyk and the promising young Moses Itauma coming for them all.
In the UFC right now, we have Waldo Cortes-Acosta, a 34-year-old upstart who is on a three-fight win streak. To his credit, Waldo has finished all three of those opponents, making him a rare throwback to better times. Yet it’s grim out there otherwise. The division is gassing out big time.
Electric.
(Chris Unger via Getty Images)
Tom Aspinall is out indefinitely as he undergoes eye surgery after getting gouged by Ciryl Gane, and that rematch remains a consolation prize for Aspinall’s never-realized unifying title fight with Jon Jones (who retired, unretired, and now is retiring again — maybe). It doesn’t get the blood pumping that Jones is out there talking about his arthritic hip, either. He says he’s interested to “forge” the post-UFC version of himself he’s to become, news that hits this thirsty fan base like gull poop from above.
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The 37-year-old Alexander Volkov, who is ranked No. 2, is coming off back-to-back split decisions. He hasn’t won an end-of-the-night bonus in five years. Sergei Pavlovich, ranked No. 3, began his UFC career avoiding the scorecards for eight fights, yet now listens to them being read with all the sophistication of a prig at the opera house. His past three fights have all been decisions. Curtis Blaydes ran into Kuniev in his last fight, and let’s just say the good people of Azerbaijan spent the rest of the night hoping nothing would trigger a flashback.
Kuniev? Serghei Spivac? Marcin Tybura? Shamil Gaziev? All north of 240 pounds and yet not a one of them can move a needle. And Jailton Almeida looked like he’d rather be anywhere than locked in a cage fighting an overgrown man in his last couple of outings. He has declared he’s returning to light heavyweight, where the hope is he can at least find an ounce of urgency.
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Not that UFC couldn’t have spiced things up. There have been numerous chances. They could’ve brought back Francis Ngannou, even if he is the “bad person” Dana White insists he is. Ngannou is seen by many as the best heavyweight in the world, and since he still had his title when he left, that would’ve jump-started the heavyweight ranks, or at least diverted attention from the sinkhole it now finds itself in.
Yet vendettas, apparently, are stronger than the desire to see the best fight the best. All I know is that Gable Stevenson can’t get his shoes off fast enough. You have to wonder if the UFC will bother signing him, though. Because Hunter Campbell and Co. could’ve signed Rico Verhoeven but, from the sounds of it, didn’t come correct with the numbers. Instead, the kickboxing superstar champion will presumably head to the boxing ring, where heavyweight fighting still commands a captive audience.
And right now, that’s not the case in the UFC’s heavyweight division. The 40-year-old Marcin Tybura is an artifact from the one-time museum of mayhem, and 41-year-old Derrick Lewis’ balls ain’t nearly as hot as they once were. It’s an aging, slow-motion, anonymous lot. Lately it would be more fun watching yaks battle flies with head shakes and ear twitches than two slabs nullifying each other.
At one time the UFC could fill out an entire main card of heavyweights and sell it to the public, which they did a little over a decade ago. These days Mick Parkin just edged out Tai Tuivasa for the final spot in the top 15. Tuivasa was still there as of this past weekend despite a modest six-fight losing streak, which tells you all you need to know about the state of the division.
