Former UFC heavyweight champion Josh Barnett has lived through numerous eras in the history of mixed martial arts including stints in PRIDE Fighting Championships and Strikeforce.
Over the years, the heavyweight division has gone through ebbs and flows in terms of popularity and the depth of the weight class. But lately it seems like heavyweight is not only a shallow division when it comes to talent but there are only a few elite fighters competing currently there in the entire sport.
Having fought
the best of the best at heavyweight throughout his career, Barnett admits it’s a miserable time for his division, especially when looking at the roster in the UFC.
“The heavyweight division has been the worst it’s been for a while now,” Barnett told MMA Fighting ahead of calling the bare-knuckle fights at Blood4Blood on Wednesday night. “There are definitely driven and hard-nosed guys with some talent. In the upper ends there’s some really great fighters like [Tom] Aspinall and [Ciryl] Gane.
“The thing is back in the day you’d see in that PRIDE era, you’d see each other go to war and bring out even our weaknesses and exploit them and we’d go after them. You’d see fights where people are playing chess matches and then they’re getting into total, all out violent brawls and then back to a chess match. You’re seeing all areas really explored and used.”
That’s not the case these days because Barnett argues that the vast majority of heavyweight fights aren’t displaying serious skills but rather turning into ugly affairs that fewer and fewer people are interested in watching.
“Nowadays it’s just a bunch of big, heavy sloppy kickboxing or big, heavy sloppy boxing with wrestling but nothing else,” Barnett said. “There was [Jailton Almeida], who was really more of a 205’er, who was just submitting everybody. But then he had one loss and then he had another and then UFC just straight up cut him, while he may have been ranked in the top 15 still.
“You need all types but looking over the last UFC card they had in Australia, it’s kind of rough going. Not to be derogatory to these guys or anything.”
The UFC Perth card featured two heavyweight fights back-to-back on the main card with Louie Sutherland defeating Tai Tuivasa in a very forgettable matchup while Brando Pericic engaged in a slugfest with Shamil Gaziev before scoring a second round knockout.
While Pericic and Gaziev earned Fight of the Night honors, it wasn’t exactly a classical masterpiece.
But Barnett isn’t giving up hope that heavyweight could turn things around with the right strategy from the promoters, most specifically looking at the UFC. He feels like the UFC taking a page out of PRIDE’s book would be a great idea to get fans enthusiastic about the division again.
“I think when you talk about eight man or 16 man [tournaments], that’s what the UFC needs to do,” Barnett said. “The UFC needs to do what they literally will not do and what most athletic commissions and the [Association of Boxing Commissions] and people that honestly only know about half as much about fighting as they think they do, wouldn’t even allow and that is an eight man tournament.
“They need to do a two-night or one-night tournament and shake up the division and settle things out. Give all these guys a chance to have something monumental to aim for and see what you get out of it. Once you’ve got that, you’ll see who’s worth keeping and who’s worth replacing. I think it’s as simple as that.”
Barnett can’t necessarily compare some of the best heavyweights from today to legends of the past with many of them regarded among the greatest of all time.
But Barnett appreciates somebody like rising UFC star Josh Hokit, who puts everything on the line when he competes while also getting attention with his outlandish behavior. That immediately gets people interested and Barnett would like to see more of that in the future.
“If you can make a fight that goes into deep waters and have interest, then it will come about,” Barnett explained. “If people are compelled to watch the fights because they’re interesting, it won’t matter whether [Josh] Hokit was ever better than this guy or that guy.
“It’s just that he’s giving great fights and people are entertained and he’s doing what he’s doing within the realm of who could be an opponent today.”
There is fresh hope at heavyweight at least where the UFC is concerned.
At the upcoming UFC White House card in June, former two-division champion Alex Pereira moves to heavyweight to challenge Ciryl Gane for an interim title with the winner expected to face Tom Aspinall once he’s cleared to compete again.
There’s also Olympic gold medalist Gable Steveson, who is already signed to the UFC roster with his debut date booked for UFC 329 in July as part of International Fight Week.
That’s just two pieces to the puzzle but Barnett wants to see more heavyweights with potential signing with the UFC to see what they can do and hopefully that injects some excitement into the division.
“The thing is there’s also a lack of consistency” Barnett said. “I think that’s another thing that people really want. They want to see consistency in performances, too. When you get a guy coming out there and smashing it up and going on these win streaks and then the next fight he completely flubs it, you’re like OK, damn. Where do we go from here? And how do we repair that?”
Barnett refuses to give up on heavyweight and he feels there’s a path back to prominence for that division, especially in the UFC, but it’s not going to happen overnight.
Maybe that means scouting more heavyweights to compete on The Contender Series or perhaps that’s mentoring young athletes who never thought about fighting until actually trying it out.
“This division could be fixed,” Barnett said. “I think so. But you need somebody with the right kind of vision and understanding to know how to fix it.”
