Top Heavyweights outside of UFC

Last week, I examined the state of the UFC's heavyweight division.Now, lets take a look at the state of the heavyweights in the rest of the world.


Once upon a time, Pride FC was home to the deepest heavyweight division in the sport. When Zuffa bought out Pride, they failed to pick up many of the pieces, resulting in a very scattered division. To date, no organization has been able to gather the majority of the heavyweights under one banner. Affliction’s first event featured the top four fighters on this list (three of them former UFC champions), but the subsequent cancellation of their upcoming event put the future of Affliction in question . And so the heavyweights remain spread out among several organizations, with Dream being the biggest player in the division outside of UFC and Affliction.


Top 16 Heavyweights outside of UFC

Its never been a secret that MMA has a shallow pool of HW fighters but this list has a bunch of aging "has been" UFC fighters that are not in the UFC now for more than just politics over money and/or contracts.

Dont get me wrong some of the ex UFC fighters truly are top of the heap but I think the real issue here is not just the quality of the fighters, its more the size of the pool. Its easy to be a big fish in a small pond and the UFC still offers one of the most competitive HW divisions in MMA, but at some point I would like to see them sign a few more of the Pride guys.

Affliction has the best HW division IMO and that might carry them for a wile but the real issue for this weight class(in any organization) is finding a pipeline of fresh quality MMA fighters. There just doesn't seem to be the stream of new guys we see in other weight classes, I guess the real question is why is that?

thats a pretty good list

Randleman is comingback... at heavyweight i think...

The only one I think should probably ranked higher is my main man Sergei.