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Let’s be honest, the heavyweight division is in dire straits right now.
This past Saturday, Jailton Almeida took on Rizvan Kuniev in the featured bout of UFC Vegas 113; it was a travesty of a fight. When 2026 is over, Almeida vs. Kuniev likely goes down as one of the worst fights of the year, and this comes on the heels of Tallison Teixeira and Tai Tuivasa both gassing out and eking their way to the final bell in a top-15 heavyweight matchup the week before.
And all of this comes after a 2025 which finally saw the heavyweight title being defended against a top opponent … only for that bout to end in a no-contest after Ciryl Gane poked Tom Aspinall in the eyes. Now, there’s not even a set timeline on when the heavyweight champion will return.
So, considering the state of the heavyweight division right now, is it time to cut our losses and move on? MMA Fighting’s Jed Meshew and Alexander K. Lee debate the merits of keeping the heavyweight division around.
It’s time to cut our losses … and the entire heavyweight division
Meshew: I take no pleasure in saying this, but there is such a thing as a lost cause, and the UFC heavyweight division is one of those right now.
There’s no way to say this without being disrespectful, so I’m just going to own it: the talent in the UFC heavyweight division is the worst it’s been since the early 2000s, when Pride had all the best heavyweights in the world. Yes, at the very top of the heap, there are good fighters, but just look at the rankings!
Until Tuesday, Tai Tuivasa, who is on a six-fight losing streak, and has not won a bout since 2021, was ranked No. 15! Derrick Lewis, who is 41 years old and 4-6 over his past 10 fights, is No. 11! Tallison Teixeira got ranked after one win in the promotion, and was still ranked after losing to Derrick Lewis in 35 seconds! Only one fighter in the Top 10 is under the age of 32. This is a weight class in freefall.
And none of this even speaks to the quality of the heavyweight fights these days, both inside and outside of the rankings. Of the 150 Fight of the Night bonuses handed out over the past five years, only THREE have gone to heavyweight fights. And when you watch Almeida vs. Kuniev — ostensibly two of the 10 best heavyweights on Earth — it’s easy to see why.
The fact is that almost all sports improve over time. Current generations build on what previous generations did with more knowledge, better nutrition, and better training; heavyweight MMA is the exception. If you had a time machine and brought prime Randy Couture or Tim Sylvia to today, they’d be at least a Top 5 heavyweight. That shouldn’t happen!
And there’s no mystery as to why it’s happening. Across sports, athletes go where the money is. If you’re a big, athletic man, you can make more money and take less brain trauma in other professional sports, so you do that. Waldo Cortes-Acosta is the hottest thing at heavyweight right now, and he came to fighting in his 20s after washing out of professional baseball. Josh Hokit is one of the few heavyweight prospects on the roster, and he came to MMA after getting waived from the Arizona Cardinals practice team. The best MMA is getting are the guys who couldn’t quite make it in other sports.
And the UFC isn’t even trying to solve the problem. In fact, they’re doing the opposite. On Wednesday, the promotion cut ties with Almeida after that snoozer of a fight. He’s the third ranked heavyweight the UFC has cut over the past year, joining Jairzinho Rozenstruik and Martin Buday. Worse still, they’re not replacing these guys with up-and-coming talent. Rico Verhoeven was the sort of signing that could breathe some life into a failing division, and the multi-billion-dollar organization wouldn’t open up the purse to sign him, losing him to boxing. Francis Ngannou remains one of the best fighters in the division, and the promotion has made it clear they will sign him when pigs fly. And they’re even making Gable Steveson twiddle his thumbs on the regional circuit for now. Not to mention how the UFC handled the entire Jon Jones vs. Stipe Miocic farce. The promotion is simply content to let the division fall into disrepair.
So why not just cut it? After all, there is precedent. In 2003, at UFC 41, B.J. Penn and Caol Uno fought to a draw for the vacant lightweight title, leaving the belt vacant. Instead of booking a trilogy or another matchup, the UFC simply decided to let the division go. There were a few more lightweight fights, but a champion was never crowned, and a year later, the division was scrapped altogether. It returned in 2006 at UFC 64, and since then has been one of the best divisions in the sport.
I’m not saying heavyweight just needs a brief hiatus to become one of the premier weight classes, but honestly, what could it hurt? Stop spending time and resources on a dreadful weight class and focus on the great ones. Let PFL absorb all the heavyweights and then, in a few years, if PFL manages to bring the division back to life, you can swoop in and take it back. And if PFL doesn’t, then it looks like you made the right choice!
You tried to get rid of flyweight a few years ago, and that was an actual good weight class. At least when you send this one to the farm, no one will be too upset about it.
Don’t cut it. Build it back.
Lee: To coin the most cliché of clichés: “It’s always darkest before the dawn.”
If there was ever a sign that the heavyweight division was snakebitten, it came at UFC 321, an event that was supposed to be the coronation of Tom Aspinall. Yes, things were going poorly for the large lad collective already, with several memorably terrible fights booked in 2025 (Hamdy Abdelwahab vs. Mohammed Usman and Denzel Freeman vs. Marek Bujlo walked so that Kuniev vs. Almeida could lumber aimlessly), but Aspinall’s first undisputed title defense against Ciryl Gane was supposed to bring balance to the force, as it were, and allow us all to move on from the regrettable Jon Jones championship “reign.”
A few fingers to the eyes later, Aspinall’s chance to assert himself as The Baddest Man on the Planet was over before it began, and we were plunged deeper into chaos. We don’t even know if Aspinall will fight again.
There’s no solving the lack of financial incentive (yet) that prevents top-tier big men from actual sports from entering MMA, but that doesn’t mean there can’t be development from within. From a technique standpoint, the mixing of the martial arts continues to evolve at a rapid pace, even if the results tend to be less pleasing than the outlaw era that a lot of us fans grew up in. Your average fighter is just better, and while that hasn’t proven true for the heavyweights recently, I believe that there may be a trickle-up of skill advancement on the way (they’ll be dancing around like lightweights in no time!). Heavyweights have been able to get away with mediocrity for too long, and if the division is truly in danger, it will adapt to survive. Perhaps we are seeing the genesis of that change with the likes of Waldo Cortes-Acosta, Valter Walker, Mario Pinto, and yes, Josh Hokit, all of whom have shown flashes of sustainable relevance.
Then there’s the Gable Steveson cloud looming over the roster. Steveson was destined to become an MMA fighter after completing the Brock Lesnar post-amateur wrestling speed run by trying out for an NFL team and flirting with a WWE career, and now all signs point to him becoming (sorry, Brock) “The Next Big Thing” in the UFC. Judging by advance hype, a large swath of fans have Steveson penciled in for a UFC championship sometime in 2027.
Look, there’s a void of compelling talent right now, to the point that a beloved top 10 contender was just callously released—yes, I’m talking about Jailton Almeida!—and most heavyweight fight announcements are met with the kind of anticipation reserved for a Tommy Wiseau project as opposed to a Hollywood blockbuster (did I mention Hamdy vs. Mo?), but for now, let’s ride out this storm and have a few laughs together. Because eventually the UFC division will rise again and, like the great Ben Rothwell, the big boys will have the last one.
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