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How the UFC Broke Its Heavyweight Division

Mark Fighting

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Once the UFC’s crown jewel, heavyweight was stacked with PRIDE legends, Strikeforce champions, and dominant title reigns - but bad business decisions, star departures, and a shrinking talent pool have turned it into a shadow of its former self. This is the story of how the “baddest man on the planet” became the UFC’s most chaotic and mismanaged division.

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20 Comments

@smiley148784 7 months ago

When there's no competition the quality of the product no longer matters..

@Urthodox 7 months ago (edited)

The UFC beefing with all their major heavyweight fighters probably doesn't help. After Tom got eyepoked they had everyone on the broadcast team hop on air to call him a bitch instead of admonishing Gane for the eye poke.

@bradbole6853 7 months ago

the ufc made it fall apart

@mostmandrake1608 7 months ago

They stopped using steriods, and actual big guys went to other sports because the ufc pays peanuts. Now we just have guys who overeat to get to that weight class

@rickydanielson7953 7 months ago

I remember how sick the (all heavyweight) ufc 146 card was, and now the division is just disgusting

@shadyganley8877 7 months ago

It fell apart one buffet at a time. 😂😂😂

@ricardoliver3970 7 months ago

Aspinall vs Ngannou was the deal during this era

@Jedwardk 7 months ago

Lack of money. Real heavyweight athletes go elsewhere.

@demacherius1 7 months ago (edited)

As usual Dana's greed killed the division.

@algerianHITM4N11 7 months ago

3 options 1. Merge heavyweight and lhw, but that makes it way harder for middleweights and smaller lhws moving up. 2. Bump up the pay and sign world class heavyweight kick-boxers and wrestlers 3. Bring steroids back to heavyweight

@Nightcall. 7 months ago

Huge portion of responsibility on Dana for letting Bones do whatever he wants

@michaellovullo7363 7 months ago

The UFC is the world weight cutting championships. The scales and women's divisions have watered the sport down and destroyed the heavyweight and light heavyweight divisions.

@efraimsoloway4420 7 months ago

To make a long story short, USADA came around

@BamKam-133 7 months ago (edited)

There was a moment in tais fight where they literally both put their hands on their hips and took a breath. I thought I was watching a bob sapp fight I’ve never seen that shit in the ufc before. They need to shut that division down and Make a middle heavy weight division or something.

@marcxiong8332 7 months ago

They screwed Ngannou so badly after he lost to Miocic. Otherwise, the HW would've been intriguing.

@Menstral 7 months ago (edited)

A division should never be eliminated, but there are periods where a division may need to go into hibernation or onto life-support for a while.

@declan92100 7 months ago

VERY briefly in 2024 the HW division looked like it was in a good place. Sergei Pavlovich and Jailton Almeida were running through people and Tuivasa was on a BIG win streak. No idea what happened to Almeida and Sergei seems to have lost his confidence and Tai just went on a 2 year bender after his loss to Gane and now gasses out before the end of the first rd

@pansnemesis 7 months ago

Honestly... heavyweights in general I've never found as interesting as the lower weight classes

@Danbui8 7 months ago

i was gonna say incentive is lacking and allow some supplements or hell some epo seeing some giant fridge sized monster go at it for 3 to 5 rounds at a ungodly pace would be entertaining