After the third season of ‘The Ultimate Fighter’ reality series showed a significant drop-off in talent level from the previous two seasons, UFC decided to switch things up for Season 4.  Instead of having sixteen up-and-coming MMA fighters compete for a chance to fight in the UFC, Season 4 featured sixteen veterans of the sport competing at a shot at the UFC title in the middleweight and welterweight divisions.  Though all of the featured fighters have competed in the Octagon in the past, most of them had below .500 records in the UFC and have never come close to winning a title.  Season 4 offered these fighters another chance to earn the gold, and was dubbed ‘the comeback season’.

Season 4 did not focus as heavily on the coaches as the previous seasons: instead of having two coaches mentoring the opposing teams, the show featured a number of UFC fighters and trainers who were made available to all contenders.  Though the fight teams did not have an official leader, welterweights Matt Serra and Rich Clementi emerged as de-facto captains of their teams. I will take a look at the middleweights first, and examine the welterweights next week.

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Notable Info

• Bouts added to database w/ recent shows from EliteXC, Warriors Collide, UWC, SuperFights, and some other minor promotions.
• Added some old bouts from minor circuits.

Notable Info

• Bouts added to database w/ recent shows from EliteXC, Shooto, Cage Gladiators, TKO, Freestyle Cage, and others.
• Approximately 850 “old” bouts added to the database!

Up until this point, we’ve only taken a look at UFC cards.  However, I wanted to do a bit of a competitiveness study while outlining the EliteXC card.

When averaging the pre-fight ranking of the favorite and underdog for each match, we get these average match-ups for the past two UFC cards and the 10/4 EliteXC card:

UFC 88: [#27] vs. [#65]

UFC Fight Night 9/17: [#43] vs. [#107]

EliteXC 10/4: [#166] vs. [#254]

While calculating, it was going well for EliteXC, especially since they have women’s matches, where its harder to draw  abysmally ranked competitors.  Same goes for the lightest male divisions.  However, I hadn’t noticed that there are debuting fighters on the card, which absolutely trashed the average rankings, since I had to use the lowest rank possible to average with.

If you only take the top 7 matches (by average ranking) of each card, you get the following results:

UFC 88: [#26] vs. [#47]

UFC Fight Night 9/17: [#39] vs. [#81]

EliteXC 10/4: [#45] vs. [#90]

By using only the 7 most competitive matches (just enough to exclude the debuting fighters), you get a more accurate picture… or do you?  It’s awful sad that the EliteXC “main event” falls well below this adjusted average.

Elite XC 10/4

Heavyweight
[#67] Kimbo Slice vs. [#205] Ken Shamrock

Welterweight
[#5] Jake Shields vs. [#23] Paul Daley

Heavyweight
[#5] Andrei Arlovski vs. [#18] Roy Nelson

Women (Open)
[#9] Gina Carano vs. [#43] Kelly Kobald

Middleweight
[#19] Murilo Rua vs. [#54] Benji Radach

Women (Open)
[#17] Cristiane Santos vs. [#39] Yoko Takahashi

Lightweight
[#157] James Edson Berto vs. [#260] Conor Heun

Light Heavyweight
[#79] Aaron Rosa vs. [#80] Seth Petruzelli

Welterweight
[#290] Lorenzo Borgomeo vs. [NR] Mickey Gomez

Welterweight
[NR] Jorge Bouchat vs. [NR] Nicolae Cury

Bantamweight
[NR] David Gomez vs. [NR] Brett Jackowski

Ranking Note: Gray font represents an approximate ranking. An asterisk represents a fighter who is ranked, but too low for an approximation. These two scenarios will clear up slightly as we move forward. “NR” means the fighter is not ranked, due to inactivity, or due to a rating that is at or below the default starter rating.

Notable Info

• Bouts added to database from recent shows such as EliteXC, Shooto, GCM, M-1, PalaceFC, Sengoku, and some minor organizations.
• Approximately 400 “old” bouts added to the database. (Where do these things keep hiding?)

There were quite a few changes of the guard this week, especially within the lightest divisions.

Featherweight sees two GCM fighters enter the Top 10, while Wilson Reis established himself as a Top 5 Bantamweight.  At Flyweight, former Top 3 stalwart Yasuhiro Urushitani was finally defeated and sees himself dropped to #5.

Notable Info

• Rankings updated with effects from shows in the past week including DREAM, WCF, ECC, Strike Force, NAAFS, Cage Rage, SportFight, Caged Combat, and others.
• Historical shows added to database.
• Improved handling (bugfix) of losses in early career.

For the past month or so, Sherdog has added a ton of historical bouts, especially those from midwest circuits.  This has caused some fluctuations from week to week.  However, they look to have completed this project, so look for the “random”  fluctuations to be reduced.

Last week, I examined the state of the UFC’s heavyweight division.  Now, lets take a look at the state of the heavyweights in the rest of the world.

Once upon a time, Pride FC was home to the deepest heavyweight division in the sport.  When Zuffa bought out Pride, they failed to pick up many of the pieces, resulting in a very scattered division.  To date, no organization has been able to gather the majority of the heavyweights under one banner. Affliction’s first event featured the top four fighters on this list (three of them former UFC champions), but the subsequent cancellation of their upcoming event put the future of Affliction in question .  And so the heavyweights remain spread out among several organizations, with Dream being the biggest player in the division outside of UFC and Affliction.

[#1] Fedor Emelianenko

MMA Record:  28-1, 1 NC (14-0 Pride FC, 1 NC)

Last bout: Defeated Tim Sylvia by submission (rear naked choke) at Affliction: Banned

Current affiliation: Affliction/M-1 Global

Sambo and Judo master Fedor Emelianenko has been indisputably the top heavyweight in the world for most of this decade, and considered by many to be the best fighter in the world in any weight class.  The last Pride HW champion holds an almost perfect professional record, his only loss a controversial cut stoppage to Tsuyoshi Kohsaka that was later avenged with a brutal beating.  After Pride’s demise, Fedor was not able to come to a deal with the UFC, and fought very infrequently and against questionable competition – until a first round stoppage of former UFC champion Tim Sylvia in his most recent bout.  Rumors of a Emelianenko – Couture dream bout have been circulating for over a year, but with Couture back in the UFC this fight doesn’t look likely to happen any time soon, leaving Andrei Arlovski and Josh Barnett as the best possible opposition for Emelianenko.

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Notable Info

• UFC Fight Night and minor shows from the past 10 days added to the database.
• Missing bouts prior to 10 days ago added to the database.

The next ranking update will be during mid-week, after the DREAM show.

 Lightweight
[#29] Nate Diaz vs. [#35] Josh Neer

Light Heavyweight
[#33] Houston Alexander vs. [#64] Eric Schafer

Lightweight
[#28] Clay Guida vs. [#34] Mac Danzig

Lightweight
[#44] Joe Lauzon vs. [#169] Kyle Bradley

Middleweight
[#46] Ed Herman vs. [#56] Alan Belcher

Middleweight
[#40] Wilson Gouveia vs. [#70] Ryan Jensen

Middleweight
[#29] Drew McFedries vs. [#173] Mike Massenzio

Middleweight
[#64] Alessio Sakara vs. [#138] Joe Vedepo

Middleweight
[#43] Dan Miller vs. [#78] Rob Kimmons

Light Heavyweight
[#74] Jason Brilz vs. [#250] Brad Morris

Ranking Note: Gray font represents an approximate ranking. An asterisk represents a fighter who is ranked, but too low for an approximation. These two scenarios will clear up slightly as we move forward. “NR” means the fighter is not ranked, due to inactivity, or due to a rating that is at or below the default starter rating.

In boxing and many other combat sports, the heavyweight division has traditionally produced the biggest stars and attracted the most attention.  Not so in mixed martial arts, where lightheavyweights have been the focal point of the sport ever since the inception of weight classes.  This has been especially true in UFC, where the biggest names have fought at 205 lbs while the heavyweight division suffered from the lack of talent and competition. 

Things were looking up for the heavyweights when Zuffa purchased Pride FC; however UFC failed to sign most of Pride’s biggest heavyweight stars in Fedor Emelianenko, Sergei Kharitonov, and the former UFC champion Josh Barnett; while Mirko ‘Cro-Cop’ Filipovic’s excursion into the Octagon ended with a whimper.  Of all the Pride heavys, only Antonio ‘Minotauro’ Nogueira thrived in the UFC.

In addition to the lack of quality contenders, UFC has also suffered from a string of bad luck with their heavyweight title holders: from Barnett’s and Tim Sylvia’s steroid scandals, to Frank Mir’s motorcycle accident, to Randy Couture’s resignation – they have been unable to establish a proper lineage, crowning interim champions on numerous occasions when the previous title holders left the organization without losing their belts.  After Couture resigned from his contract and former champions Sylvia and Andrei Arlovski left UFC for the new rival Affliction,  the heavyweight division was at its lowest point in a long time.

Recently, Couture announced that he will be returning to the UFC after a year-long legal battle.  Couture’s return, in addition to Brock Lesnar’s debut in the top 20 after defeating Heath Herring, shifted the balance of HW division slightly into UFC’s favor.  According to the latest Fightmatrix.com ranking, 3 of the Top 5, 5 of the Top 10, and 7 of the Top 20 heavyweights are currently competing in the UFC.

Here is an in-depth look at UFC’s heavyweight division:

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