MMA Top 10 Pound-for-Pound Heavyweight
My top 10 best pound for pound fighters for the past year has always been a heavyweight in the top of the list: Fedor Emelianenko convinced me of his Combatant Status No. 1 with his victory over Andrei Arlovski in January 2009 (I was upstairs Anderson Silva before that) and I have not changed my mind since.
But it is quite unusual for a truck to be the best pound for pound fighter. In fact most of the book early for filing in the book of boxing are effectively excluded trucks. I was asked recently what Cain Velasquez should do to be considered a Top 10 pound for pound fighter, and it made me think about how to stack up truck in the pound for pound rankings .
Part of what makes a great Fedor is that he has dominated the truck, much larger Brett Rogers and Tim Sylvia. At 230 pounds, he is a disadvantage when fighting guys who balloon up to 280 between fights and has been forced to reduce the limit to 265 pounds. But Fedor beat them anyway.
Across the spectrum heavy Brock Lesnar. I Lesnar No. 2 on my investments of the language, but I would have a terribly hard time ranking Lesnar in my Top 10 pound-for-pound fighters. Even if Lesnar beat Fedor, it would really make Lesnar a Top-10 pound for pound fighter? Or would it simply say that Lesnar to be dehydrated to 265 for the route-ins, then enter the Octagon about 280, is simply a benefit too large to overcome for Fedor?
This brings me to Velasquez. If I could see another heavyweight besides Fedor, which makes the top 10 pound for pound rankings, it would Velasquez. People sometimes talk of Velasquez, as a kind of physical monster, but it is really not as big as standard heavyweight: He weighed 242 pounds to 110 UFC, making him much less than Lesnar, and has also a rather large minor that Frank Mir and Shane Carwin. If Velasquez becomes UFC champion heavy weight of the biggest opponents, he would have a very good reason to be one of the Top 10 pound-for-pound fighters in the world.
Nyubi 10:39 pm on March 2, 2010 Permalink
how thing’s goin’ now?