It’s just Brock hatred manifesting itself in other places – in this case, destroying a weight class everyone was JUST FINE with until Brock came along.

Cry me a fucking river.

A lot of guys could cut to 235 who currently come in above it. The real issue would be that the 236+ class would be near empty.

To answer your question: There does exist quite a few athletes in various sports that weigh 265, although it is unimportant if they are “champions” or not. I don’t feel like listing them off by name but I will say that they exist in Collegiate Football, Professional Football, Collegiate Free-style wrestling, Collegiate Greco-wresting, boxing, olympic wrestling, and yes… professional wrestling — maybe a few others.

Frank Mir was 255lbs for his last fight with Lesnar, on one of Dana’s last blogs Lesnar said his weight was 276lbs. Big Nog is listed at the bottom of this thread at 237lbs, the difference between Mir and Nog is about the same as between Lesnar and Mir, are people complaining about Mir’s huge size advantage over Nog?

I don’t know how anyone can miss the likes of Michael Westbrook, Marcus Jones, Carlton haselrig and others transitioning to mma??? There have been articles on BE about Santana Moss and others getting into BJJ. MMA is exploding, as are the individual arts such as BJJ, MT, Judo, wrestling, boxing, etc…. People are just into this, why should future athletes be any different?

As the money and popularity involved grows, you can expect more and more top level athletes to take up the sport/arts on different levels. Perhaps a guy that would have been an NCAA linebacker, instead focuses on mma? We are just beginning to see the influx of national champion or olympic level wrestlers on a major level. Where as there were a few of those types around since the beginning, it seems a lot are now all-americans or olympic hopefuls.

Yes, the ranks may be somewhat thin now, but remember, the average career of an NFL player is 4-5 years. That leaves a pretty young competitor looking for a way to keep competing at something.

No they don’t. Most of those guys play football from Elementary School on and that isn’t likely to change in the future, MMA isn’t something you can just pick up with a couple of lessons if they aren’t growing up with some kind of martial art it’s unlikely they are going to just pick one up and change to a completly unrelated sport out of the blue. Amateur wrestlers will flock to MMA but football players are going to dream about the NFL and concentrate on their football skills. Any bleed over from football to MMA would be rare and it would be the guys that couldn’t make it in football not the elite level atheletes.

It should also be noted that a lot of those giant sized guys in the NFL bulk up to be that size, it is a size they worked to get to because that is what is neccessary to play pro football at that position. The average size for a pro linebacker is 220lbs to 260lbs those guys aren’t the Lesnar sized guys anyway it’s the linemen that are the big guys and they don’t have to be as atheletically mobile but they block and push on each other. It won’t be those giant sized guys moving to MMA.

The punch that floored Randy was pretty damn good as well, Brock seemed to have timed Coutures head movement perfectly. He faked the left jab then followed with a right hand to where Randy’s new head position was. Brock has a hell of a long reach.

Yeah, you’re probably right about Brock getting tired, however, the cut made him pick up the pace because the fight could have been stopped. If Brock didn’t try to finish it, he might have ended up losing, so he went for broke and it worked. Still the cut could have ended the fight in the later rounds.

Also, I don’t remember Brock manhandling Randy. Sure he took him down a couple of times and was effective in executing his gameplan. But Brock’s technique was solid. For example, while he had Randy up against the fence, he used Randy’s defensive posture against him and pulled Randy’s right ankle out from under him while stepping past him to get the takedown. It wasn’t brute force that got that takedown. As to Randy getting shrugged off, Brock has an increasingly technical jiu-jitsu game and I would cite that incident as an example.

Essentially, I wonder if you and I don’t fundamentally disagree about the nature of the fight. I just don’t remember the fight the way that you describe it.

You are really good at ignoring opposing viewpoints. The weight difference is entirely due to the available pool of competitors. There is no “error”.

+Gonzaga came in at 256 on Friday, if memory serves.

Sorry to be picky, but I don’t think Brock adds 35 pounds in 24 hours.

If x – 256 = 45, x = 301. Not exactly.

The talent pool is not deep enough and never will be.

I know this because the separate disciplines that make up MMA – wrestling, muay thai, jiu-jitsu, boxing – don’t have anyone at Brock’s size that can do what he does. And if there is, they are few and far between. People that get to that size simply aren’t as quick and agile as Brock Lesnar.

 It’s not a matter of “waiting” until the sport gets even bigger. We could wait 50 years until MMA eclipses the NFL and I still don’t think we would see a massive amount of 280 pounders who could move like Brock Lesnar. He doesn’t make sense.

What do you think you are seeing now? These guys fighting LHW don’t step into the cage at 206.

Pretty sure we’re already seeing 225 Chuck.

Completely agree.

Because to me, the only reason to ever do it is that there are so many great fighters under contract and the UFC has increased airtime.

There aren’t enough fighters. There isn’t enough airtime.

End of argument.

You know, strangely, I was worried their wouldn’t be enough talent between 235 and whatever the cap would be, say 275. After looking at the list, it seems that most of the talent is above that line. Of course there are guys that could cut below it, but just for arguments sake, look at it the way it is. The 206-235 range seems to be where the lack of talent would be, but that is where it would get built by guys like Liddell moving up in weight and so forth.

Take AA for instance, and pretend he is still with the UFC. Would he take a fight with Randy and cut below 236, or would he take a fight with Lesner, that would be huge? I think he would go after the big fish, which is now Brock. This is an example of what I am saying, it could be very interesting.

And I’m not saying this needs to happen tomorrow, but i do think at some point, it will have to be addressed. Bigger guys are becoming more athletic, explosive, etc. All things being equal, a 225 pound HW has a huge disadvantage to somebody 40 pounds heavier with equal skills and ability. 60 pounds is a damn big range.

And just to clear up all the Brock hate BS, I don’t care about him one way or the other, same with randy. GG and Nog are my guys at HW. I have nothing against Brock and think he can actually propel the sport. I’m sick of hearing everything about the freakin’ Brock hate. As I’ve stated before, the call for splitting the HW class has been a hot topic for years before Brock even considered mma.

A superheavyweight TUF would be a real joke and if you look at the last Heavyweight TUF group almost all of them dropped to light heavyweight after it was over, well except for the guys who didn’t make it in the UFC. The biggest heavyweight name to come out of that show was Brad Imes. There is just a real lack of young talent at that weight class to fill out a TUF group.