What Next For The UFC’s Heavyweight Division?

What Next For The UFC’s Heavyweight Division?

By Dan McConnell

On Saturday night the current UFC Light-Heavyweight Champion Daniel Cormier defeated the UFC Heavyweight champion Stipe Miocic via knockout in the first round.

But what does this mean for the Light-Heavyweight and Heavyweight divisions?

Daniel Cormier became the second fighter in UFC history to reign supreme over two divisions and legitimised his potential greatest of all time tag.

The UFC has known for a while that they are faced with a tricky situation at 205 and Heavyweight. They didn’t hesitate to make the Cormier Stipe super-fight and already are now looking to book Cormier against Brock Lesnar. This indicated the UFC’s desire and need for big draws in the sport with Conor McGregor, Jon Jones, Ronda Rousey and GSP situations.

The next series of The Ultimate Fighter 28 is an attempt by the company to scout and develop potential Heavyweight’s to add to their lack-lustre roster as well as the Women’s Featherweight division. Current UFC Middleweight Champion Robert Whittaker and number one contender Kelvin Gastelum will coach the series.

When you look down the UFC Light-Heavyweight but more so the Heavyweight division there isn’t an awful lot of talent that is on the rise, most are veterans on the downward.

Francis Nagnnou was supposed to be the next best thing until he was defeated by Stipe and put in an almost scared performance over Derek Lewis at UFC 226. Alistair Overeem, Mark Hunt, Fabricio Werdum, Marcin Tybura, Andrei Arlovski, Junior Dos Santos and Stefan Struve don’t offer much right now in their careers to truly threaten Daniel Cormier and his title. Fighters like Roy Nelson and Josh Barnett have been easily let go from the UFC.

The only real fighters who have shown promise are Derek Lewis, Curtis Blaydes, Alexander Volkov, Tai Tuivasa and Alexey Oliynyk. Cain Velasquez is a wildcard pick as of yet, he hasn’t fought since UFC 200 because of major back issues but can still compete at the highest level but has been out of the game with no return planned. Cain and Cormier are training partners at AKA and are good friends so they will never fight each other anyway. None of these men seem ready for a title shot and will not bring in great PPV numbers right now that the UFC desires.

Is it unclear who will feature in TUF 28 as open workouts have been taking place. It is very clear the UFC needs an influx of Heavyweight contenders and right now. Here are some names the UFC should be going after:

Fighters such as Mauro Cerilli 12-2, Vitaly Minakov 21-0, Sergei Kharitonov 28-7, Denis Goltsov 21-5, Jan Jorgensen 8-1 should be names considered to feature in the new TUF season.