If a Giant Falls in the Octagon... Would Anybody Care?

Coming into the New Year, there’s one important State of the Sport address to be made, and UFC President Dana White should hold a press conference to figure the damn thing out.

The UFC heavyweight division is the elephant in the room right now; it’s just sitting there, fat, immobile and out-of-place as it slowly decays. This is affected both in the quality of recruiting and the inability of an overseas organization to put together some solid matchups to really force Dana and Joe Silva to do anything about it. I mean, why should Dana organize a tournament when the biggest matchup in the heavyweight matchup in the heavyweight market in the last three months that he didn’t own was between Fedor Emelianenko and Hong Man Choi?

I think Choi’s a pretty good fighter, and even I knew that was a half-hearted matchup.

The matchup man Joe Silva has put together some interesting parings in the lighter divisions, and Dana has made a clear effort to raise the bar at 205 pounds, bringing in Pride fighters like Mauricio “ Shogun” Rua, Wanderlei, Sokoudjou and the new UFC champion Quinton “Rampage” Jackson. Even though Shogun, Silva and Sokoudjou dropped their opening fights, the 205 pound division seems to get mixed around a little bit after every card and the upcoming opponent for Jackson’s belt is an issue that gets a lot of people going, as opposed to the big-man’s division, where there seems to be a lot less “who’s next?” and a lot more “who cares?”



While the 185 pound division is often seen as slacking a little bit, too, at least there are some really interesting matchups coming out of that division and a champion that continues to be mind-melting with every fight. The UFC doesn’t even have a king at 265 pounds and the undisputed champ on the world stage only fought twice this year, both against opponents who were nowhere near qualified.

But it’s not just the fall of many of the big name senior guys in the division starting to step down as age kicks in, it’s also the fact that the UFC hasn’t been showing any signs of bringing in new, young talent, or even drawing the serious overseas talent pool that was expected after Zuffa’s buyout of Pride.



Realistically, I don’t know why they aren’t bringing guys in, it’s not like there aren’t guys out there.

I’m not just talking about the Brock Lesnar’s of the sport, who may be more talk than walk when it comes their time to step into the Octagon. There’s also a whole field of guys that the UFC hasn’t even talked to who deserve to fight in the Octagon and would make this division thicker than Evan Tanner’s hair.

I mean, even beyond the up-and-comers that have a little fame already, like Roger Gracie (backed by his family name) and Big Ben Rothwell (who’s starting to really come into his own in the IFL), there’s an entire echelon of guys out there with the skillset to be in this division. I could rattle off their names (Mike Russow, Neil Grove and Christian N’Pumbu), but it wouldn’t matter, because nobody knows who they are, because their testicles haven’t been caressed by the starmaking power of Mike Goldberg’s lips.

Believe, me, though, when I tell you that Russo (7-1-0), Grove (5-0-0) and N’Pumbu (8-0-0) are all more worthy of the octagon limelight then Justin McCully or Scott Junk. I mean, if the UFC is looking for a serious veteran so badly, they should hire Travis Fulton (188-44-9), who’s got more credibility than Junk or McCully, and has more fights in his career than the entire rest of that heavyweight roster put together.



In the upcoming year, my forecast isn’t so gloomy. Hopefully, Cheick Kongo will show some groundskills and Eddie Sanchez will stop yelling “Yeah, boy” every time he lands a punch (if they don’t knock the guy out, you probably shouldn’t be so excited).

In all likelihood, Nogueira and Silva will bring a show to decide the new heavyweight champion, and we will deal with whatever new regime is born out of that, but I hope that this division starts to come together, since it’s thinner than Randy Couture’s hair right now.

There’s bound to be one good recruit the UFC picks up, and given the ones they’ve thrown back into smaller ponds this year (and I’m not just talking about Brad Imes and all of his go-go-glory) they could always invite a guy back, and I wouldn’t complain.



Taking the rumors of signing former K-1 heavyweight champion Semmy Schilt at face value, we can only hope that the UFC will put some effort (and some money) into this serious fixer-upper division. Then, maybe we’ll start to care when a 265 pound ass hit’s the canvas and Steve Mazzagatti spits out the winner’s name through that ridiculous porn star mustache.