Contributor: Tim Hickey
With his most recent win at UFC Fight Night 28, Glover Teixeira was announced as the next fighter to get a shot at the light heavyweight strap and face the winner of Jon Jones and Alexander Gustaffson later this month at UFC 165. This was met with some criticism from some fans (when in MMA does something not sit right with some fans?) saying that since Glover has only defeated one fighter in the top 10, he doesn’t deserve the matchup. In reality, he is really the only new contender in the LHW division at the moment. Seriously, look at the UFC’s top 10 at LHW:
- Alexander Gustafsson – Getting his shot this month.
- Glover Teixeira – Next in line for his shot
- Phil Davis – really the only other fighter you could argue could be in the mix. I wouldn’t be opposed to letting he and Glover fight for the No 1 contender.
- Lyoto Machida – Had his shot, had been on a two fight winning streak prior to split decision loss to Davis. Now headed down to MW.
- Rashad Evans – Lost a title fight to Jones, lost to Lil Nog, and then took a close decision from Hendo. Needs at least another 1 or 2 impressive wins to get back to a title fight.
- Lil Nog – Won a close fight against Rashad, but has only fought twice since December of 2011.
- Dan Henderson – On a two fight losing streak.
- Gegard Mousasi – Rumblings of heading down to MW.
- Chael Sonnen – Got massacred by the champion a few months ago, 1-2 in his last 3 fights.
- Shogun Rua – He is 1-3 in his last 4 fights and in danger of slipping out of the top 10 for the first time since 2005 should he lose his next fight.
So let’s take a look at this. We have two of the top 10 fighters in this division looking to move down in weight. One fighter isn’t averaging a fight a year as of right now (Lil Nog). Rashad hasn’t looked overly impressive since he crushed Tito Ortiz back in 2011. Hendo has unfortunately begun to look his age a bit and is on a 2 fight losing streak. I think Chael P will be hard pressed to talk his way back into a title shot. Shogun looks like his career as a high level fighter are over. So really, taking a look at it, Glover doesn’t seem like such a bad option right now.
So the next question is; what happened to the Light Heavyweight division? There was a time and a place where there was never a dearth of fighters at 205 that were knocking on the door of a title shot. Joe Rogan used to tell us all the time how deep the division was. Those days have passed. It really has been a combination of a few things:
The division got old.
Lets take a look back at October of 2010 Sherdog rankings for the light heavyweight division:
- Shogun Rua (19-4)
- Lyoto Machida (16-1)
- Rashad Evans (15-1-1)
- Rampage Jackson (30-8)
- Forrest Griffin (17-6)
- Ryan Bader (12-0)
- Jon Jones (11-1)
- Lil Nog (19-4)
- Rafael Cavalcante (10-2)
- King Mo (7-1)
Listed on the outside looking in were Randy Couture, Rich Franklin, Vladimir Matyushenko, Gegard Mousasi and Thiago Silva. We see a division that looks wide open, with a lot of depth. There are lots of fighters still at or near the top of their game. The problem is, when I look at the UFC rankings 3 years later, the names haven’t changed too much. After the rise of Jon Jones, and to a lesser extent, Gustafsson and Phil Davis, there haven’t been very many good young Light Heavyweight prospects coming down the pipeline. Of the top 11 fighters listed on UFC’s page, only 4 of them are under 30 years old (Jones, Gus, Mousasi and Phil Davis). The rest are 33 or older (ok, Shogun is only 31, but he is roughly 60 in fight years).
I know what you are thinking. “Ok Tim, you loveably husky bastard, the young fighters are still ranked outside of the top ten and working their way up.” Unfortunately that is not the case right now, as most of the LHW under UFC contract aren’t necessarily spring chickens. We have Ryan Bader (30), Thiago Silva (30), James Te Huna (31), Ryan Jimmo (31) Wanderlei Silva (37), even prospect Jimi Manuwa is 33 years old. Even if you look outside of the UFC, there are a total of 7 top 25 ranked LHW under 30 (Attila Vegh, Emanuel Newton and Rumble Johnson are all 28 and 29 years old, plus the 4 mentioned above). The point I am trying to make, unlike the lightweight, and welterweight divisions, where we have seen some large fluctuations in the top 10 over the past 3 years, this hasn’t happened in the LHW division. Without another influx of new blood, the division will remain pretty stagnant.
The dominance of Jon Jones.
Back in 2009, when Anderson Silva was infuriating fans by going to decisions with the likes of Thales Leites and Patrick Cote, 
fans used to insinuate that the only reason the middleweight division looked so sparse in the UFC was because of a dominant champion. In actuality, it was a combination of The Spider’s dominance, but also that some of the best 185 pounders were plying their trade outside of the UFC. Ranked in the top 10 at the time included Robbie Lawler (Elite XC), Gegard Mousasi (Dream), an undefeated and not yet crazy Paulo Filho (WEC) and ummmm, wow Frank Trigg (Hawaii Somethingorother). In 2013, we have seen Jon Jones annihilate the majority of the division on his way to greatness, and while it plays a big part in making it hard to sell rematches, it also should be noted that the UFC has not done a whole lot to bring new talent to the division. Seriously, when you look at the list of names from 2010, and the list of names now 3 years later, it looks essentially the same. Jones has had the kind of dominance and stability the division hadn’t seen since the days of Chuck Liddell (4 defenses) and Tito Ortiz (5 defenses) but it is getting to the point where he will have officially cleaned out the entire division very soon. The division has been so lacking in challengers as of late, two middleweight fighters had a shot at Jones. The best thing that can happen to this division at this point will be for Jones to move up to Heavyweight (should he defeat Gustafsson), and allow the rest of the 205ers a chance at becoming a champion and maybe open things up a bit.
Relative inactivity at the top of the division.
Do you know that Teixeria as of right now is the only LHW in the top 10 that has fought more than twice this year? There are 4 fighters in the top 10 right now who have fought only once, or less (Lil Nog, Shogun and Mousasi have all fought only once, Gustafsson hasn’t fought at all this year). It is easy for a division to keep spinning its wheels if most of the top 10 aren’t fighting that often. Hell, even Jon Jones, who fought 4 times in 2011, has only fought 3 times since April of 2012.
The fall of the supersized heavyweight.
Before Cain Velasquez’ destruction of Brock Lesnar back in 2010, the UFC Heavyweight division looked like it was going to be held down by the most monstrous of men. Lesnar, Shane Carwin, Frank Mir, Ben Rothwell, and Roy Nelson were all huge. Most of them tipped in the scale at around 265 lbs, and a lot of them cut weight to make it. The days of the mid-sized, 225 to 240lbs heavyweights seemed at an end. A lot of those fighters were figured to start making the cut to 205, and adding an influx of talent to the already packed division. Fighters saw guys like Rampage and Forrest Griffin cut 30 to 40lbs to make weight, and it promised to make the LHW division even strong. But once Brock fell, and then Carwin, then Mir, the tables were turned back to the mid sized HW dominating the landscape. This made it so we never saw the Velaquez’s or the dos Santos’ of the world try to cut down to LHW and ply their trade there.
In the end, eventually the light heavyweight division will come back around. You look at the welterweight division 2 or 3 years ago, and it looked like GSP would need to move up to find some new challengers. Then when he got hurt, the next breed of fighters began to move up. The Hendricks’ and Ellenberger’s and MacDonald’s of the world began to find their stride, and now it looks like GSP could finish his career at 170 and still not completely clean out the division. I have faith that this will eventually happen in Light Heavyweight. In the meantime, the LHW division will find itself on the shallow end in terms of division depth, ranked down there with the Flyweight and Women’s Bantamweight divisions. Pretty sad for what was once the sports big money weight class.
-Tim can be reached @timhickey80.
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