UFC event heavy on heavyweights pays off with some lessons on tricky division

If you looked closely on Sunday afternoon, you got a good, long glimpse of the UFC’s heavyweight division in motion as it flashed by at UFC Fight Night 86 in Zagreb, Croatia.

It was about as robust a cross-section of the weight class as you’re ever going to see at one event, with everything from a former champ to a streaking contender to a stubbornly successful specialist to genuine prospects to good old-fashioned tough guys committing good old-fashioned mindless violence.

It was weird, in other words. And fun. It could have been much, much worse.

It’s a gamble, given the current overall state of the division, to put five heavyweight fights on one card. Lately we’ve had a lot of nights when it seemed like only two kinds of heavyweight bouts are in MMA: the kind that end almost immediately, and the kind that seem as if they never will.

We got lucky at Zagreb Arena. Five heavyweight fights, and there wasn’t a bad one in the bunch.

There were moments of almost nauseatingly efficient violence, such as when Jared Cannonier nearly squashed Cyril Asker’s skull during the prelims, or when Derrick Lewis continued his unlikely climb up the ranks with a knockout of Gabriel Gonzaga.

There were also moments that felt about as important and exactly as visually compelling as watching two motorcycle gang enforcers duke it out, and I assure you that comparison has only a little something to do with Timothy Johnson’s incredible mustache.

Francis Ngannou

Then there was that rarest of sights when Francis Ngannou took on and eventually defeated Curtis Blaydes. Hold up, was that a 29-year-old heavyweight with real potential and promise facing off against a 25-year-old heavyweight who came into the bout undefeated? In a division where there’s so much more past than future, such a thing hardly even seems possible.

But, as we were reminded in the main event, the UFC heavyweight class is a picture that changes every time you look at it. Former champion Junior dos Santos, who looked lost and spent in his last outing, revived his footwork along with his career in a unanimous-decision win over Ben Rothwell, whose loss snapped a four-fight winning streak. Now instead of wondering what it will take for Rothwell to get a title shot, we suddenly have to ask ourselves whether Dos Santos is really as close to finished as we thought.

It’s not so different at the top of the division, where a man who Dos Santos knocked out cold in his UFC debut now holds the title in his late 30s. In any other division, champ Fabricio Werdum might be just barely clinging to relevance. At heavyweight, he seems to have only begun to settle into his stride.

What the weight class has struggled with in the recent past isn’t so much a lack of raw talent or ratings-boosting hype – Brock Lesnar had both, in varying amounts – but depth and diversity. We’ve seen some good heavyweights in the UFC cage. We just haven’t seen them at the same time.

We also haven’t ever seen anything resembling real, sustained dominance. Not ever. The UFC heavyweight strap still has never had an owner capable of more than two consecutive successful title defenses. Just when you get used to the new order, the whole thing gets turned on its head.

To the extent that that’s a problem, it’s an ongoing one. That’s the flip side of a division that’s always in a state of violent upheaval. Long winning streaks are hard to come by. Contenders are always rising and falling from one fight to the next. The chaos keeps things interesting, but occasionally also makes them confusing.

The good news is that at least there’s action in the weight class now. At least there’s some movement, even if it’s sometimes hard to track or predict. Anyone who remembers the days of endless Tim Sylvia-Andrei Arlovski title fight rematches knows how stale things can get without some shakeups in the ranks.

Like the heavyweights themselves, maybe the only way for this division to stay interesting is for it to never stop moving, lest it lose all momentum. As hard as it is to stop a 265-pound fighter with a full head of steam, there have been events in the not-so-distant past where it seemed equally as difficult to get one started.

For more on UFC Fight Night 86, check out the UFC Rumors section of the site.