2012 World MMA Heavyweight Scouting Report: #9 - Jan Jorgensen

I follow WMMA a lot more than is healthy in fact.

(tl;dr: skip to the last two sentences)

All WMMA divisions combined aren’t as deep as Men’s HW. Outside of W145 I don’t think there’s any Women’s division where you can go 1-0 and be considered a serious prospect yet (and even there we’re talking about ex-Olympians or high-level Muay Thai fighters who beat name opponents in their debuts). Sure you don’t have to lop off but the top 15 or so W145 fighters if you eliminate everyone who has fought at that division for Strikeforce/Jewels/Valkyrie, but the number of active fighters at W145 is literally less than 10% of the number of active HWs and that’s being generous. This is from comments made by JCS who uses Sherdog’s entire database to rank fighters at FightMatrix.com (his estimate on the number of active fighters at HW + SHW who were “above the starter rating” was around 700; from comments he made when I tried to get him to expand the number of published rankings for one of the women’s divisions, even the deepest women’s division has only around 60 active fighters right now who meet the same criteria).

So yes, a 1-0 fighter without high-level credentials in a striking or grappling base, even if you eliminate everyone who’s ever fought in the majors, even at Men’s HW, it still struck me as odd to see him listed as a top prospect. I dunno, I’ll defer to you that Men’s HW really is that thin when you also eliminate everyone over 30 but I hardly feel I’m ignorant on the size of divisions.

Even after he beat iup Kimbo Slice and Marcus Jones, people thought he was one of the worst HWs in the UFC, and say what you will about Slice but he’s probably a lot better than Lolo Tuiaki and Marcus Jones was a legit excellent prospect. Also Mittrione was ex-NFL at least.

Where did I say 5’9" and fat?

I would rather see a 30+ year-old monster or two. Brock Lesnar was 30 when he signed with the UFC and 31 when he got his first UFC win. Randy Couture started his MMA career at 33. Shane Carwin was 33 when he reached the UFC. Roy Nelson was 32 when he reached EliteXC. For that matter Matt Mitrione, mentioned earlier in the thread, was 31 when he made his professional debut. Lots of good or even great HWs never fought in the majors before they were 31 or older.

In other weight classes, Alexis Vila, a natural Flyweight, was 40 when he debuted in Bellator and knocked out their reigning Featherweight Champion Joe Warren in 64 seconds. And while it was an upset, it wasn’t a mindbending one, people who knew who Vila was knew he was really good. So yeah, while age is a consideration for people who are more potential than proven, I would have gone with a higher cutoff age.

Thanks, that’s what I thought