While some divisions in the UFC never seem to suffer from a lack of depth or new talent emerging, others go through the usual ebb and flow, sliding from periods of great competition to those where new faces and fresh matchups are nonexistent.
It wasn’t too long ago that the middleweight division seemed perpetually stuck in the latter—Anderson Silva’s reign of dominance combined with a lack of new names breaking through in the upper echelon creating a stale situation in the 185-pound weight class.
But over the last year, things have changed completely in the middleweight ranks, and not just because Chris Weidman came along and ousted Silva from the position he held at the top of the division for 2,457 days either… though that certainly helped.
Though a few familiar names remain in the mix — Vitor Belfort, Michael Bisping, Mark Munoz—there is an abundance of new talent that has climbed the ladder and worked to establish themselves as legitimate players in what has historically been one of the UFC’s least intriguing divisions.
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Again—Silva’s dominance played a big part in that, but there was also a long stretch of time where the same four or five fighters held down the Top 5, and just kept trading wins and losses amongst themselves while beating everyone else that tried to break through.
It’s not just the changing of the guard at the top though.
What also makes Weidman’s emergence as the man to beat in the middleweight division critical to injecting new life into a once stagnant division is that the only fighter he beat on his way to the top that remains in the Top 10 (besides Silva, of course) is Mark Munoz. That means everyone else in the Top 5 is a new matchup—a fight we haven’t seen and can’t simply chalk up as a no doubt about it win for the champion, which is something we didn’t have with Silva at the helm.
Just having the potential of fresh championship pairings gives everyone in the new life and makes fights between contenders compelling again, since everyone has the chance to string together a couple wins and potential fight for the title in the future.
The next greatest impact on the division has come from Strikeforce, as Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza, Luke Rockhold, and Tim Kennedy all find themselves ranked in the Top 10, having combined to go 4-1 in the Octagon last year, with Rockhold having picked up his first UFC victory already this year.
Souza has been the most impressive of the group and could collect his third straight win since switching organizations this weekend, while Kennedy’s profile is on the rise thanks to a pair of quality victories and an impending date with the aforementioned Michael Bisping later this year. None of the three have any history with the other members of the Top 10 (though they’ve fought each other already), and present a number of new potential matchups, something that was lacking for quite some time in the middleweight division.
Not included in that group of Strikeforce ex-pats is Gegard Mousasi, who headlines Saturday’s UFC Fight Night event in Jaragua du Sol opposite Lyoto Machida, another new arrival we’ll get to momentarily.
The former Strikeforce light heavyweight champion collected a win in his maiden trip into the Octagon last April in the 205-pound ranks, only to have knee surgery halt his momentum and temporarily push him out of the spotlight. While currently not ranked at 185 pounds (he’s No. 9 at LHW), Mousasi will undoubtedly be in the mix when the new rankings come out Monday regardless of the outcome of this weekend’s main event.
After years of speculation and online analysis of the “should he or shouldn’t he” variety, Machida finally moved to middleweight late last year, making an instant impression in his new weight class by dropping perennial contender Mark Munoz with a head kick midway through the first round of their October fight in Manchester, England. Former champions changing weight classes always inject new life into a division and Machida has the opportunity to jump to the head of the list of contender with a solid performance in his sophomore appearance in his new weight class Saturday night.
What makes it even better is that there are still some lesser known talents working their way up the divisional ladder with eyes on the upper echelon as well.
Francis Carmont stands at the top of that list, as the Tristar Gym product has put together a six-fight winning streak in the UFC (11 fights overall) and could put himself in the thick of the chase with an upset win over “Jacare” in Saturday’s co-main event.
Later this year—UFC on FOX 11 in April to be exact—emerging talents Brad Tavares and Yoel Romero will tangle to see which one of them enters the Top 10 and takes another step towards contention.
Tavares, an Ultimate Fighter Season 11 alumnus, has strung together five consecutive victories and seven wins in eight fights in the UFC on the strength of clean, technical striking and steadily improving takedown defense, while Romero is a former Olympic silver medalist in freestyle wrestling that has shown nasty power in ending all three of his UFC fights with his striking. Despite their individual success, neither has been able to crack the Top 10 as of yet, which speaks to how deep and talented this division has become.
And there are other potential new arrivals on the horizon as well, with several fighter emerging off recent seasons of The Ultimate Fighter that could potentially put together a few wins and develop into contenders much in the same way Tavares has. That group includes the likes of Luke Barnatt, Cezar “Mutante” Ferreira, Clint Hester, and Uriah Hall, among others.
Given that middleweight felt like a wasteland for a long time, the changes that have taken place over the last seven or eight months have completely altered the outlook of the division, and turned it into one of the most compelling weight classes in the UFC.