00:00Tom, why do you think the heavyweight division over the last couple of years has not been one of the
00:05more dominant divisions?
00:07I mean, you know, you go back even into boxing.
00:09Boxing really hasn't had a dominant heavyweight that was able to move the needle since Tyson.
00:14And the guy that moved it was Mayweather.
00:17How come they have not been able to really, really enhance that division?
00:21Because everybody wants to see the big guys fight.
00:23Why is that division struggling?
00:28I think the problem is there's just not a lot of great heavyweights.
00:33A lot of the fighters that are in the UFC right now really wouldn't have sniffed the UFC heavyweight division
00:40tango.
00:42There's a lot of really sloppy, sluggish fights.
00:46You know, you had Tom Aspinall.
00:47He was the hot young star that was coming up.
00:50And, you know, he had the eye poke controversy.
00:52So now he's out of the picture.
00:54And there's just not a lot of contenders.
00:56And it's really hard to go on a streak in the UFC heavyweight division because you can run into a
01:03power puncher that knocks you out and ends your streak.
01:06Or you can run into a grappler that's just going to hold you down.
01:10And now all of a sudden you're looked at as a boring fighter who can't fight grapplers.
01:14There's so many different things.
01:16But really, there's just not a lot of elite heavyweights right now.
01:20You know, Francis Ngannou left a few years ago.
01:23It would have been interesting to see him versus Tom Aspinall.
01:26But they had the big blowout with Dana White and the whole contract controversy and all that stuff.
01:31And Francis went on and made, you know, $30 million or whatever he made in boxing.
01:36And we just haven't had that consistent guy at the top.
01:40And the lower end of the division, it looks like a lot of bar fights.
01:45And sometimes it's fun.
01:48But sometimes it's just two big guys just kind of slugging and laying on each other for three rounds against
01:55the cage.
01:55So, you know, it's just, it's a bit of a tough time.
01:59But, you know, we got Waldo Cortez Acosta who's coming up.
02:02He's been knocking guys out.
02:03We got Volkov, who's a really good heavyweight, who's been at the top of the division for a long time.
02:09We got the Cyril Gan Pereira fight coming up.
02:11So, there is some heavyweight division.
02:14I think it's picking up a little bit.
02:15But we just had a bit of a rough stretch over the past year, year and a half,
02:21where there's just been a lot of kind of lower level heavyweight fights because of,
02:27and also the John Jones thing.
02:29John Jones had the belt.
02:30He didn't fight for a long time.
02:32So, when you're not seeing title fights, it kind of puts a damper on the whole division.
02:37So, it's kind of tough.
02:40Tom, do you agree, and you tell me if I'm wrong here on this,
02:43one of the things that I've brought up all the time is that when you don't see the big guys,
02:47it's that it's about the money, too.
02:49Like, when you're an elite athlete, you're going to go to the NFL.
02:52You know, you're just going to go there because the money's there.
02:55Is that maybe one of the reasons also, too, that you don't see the big dudes being involved in heavyweights
03:01because the money is just not where it needs to be.
03:04If I'm an elite athlete in high school and I'm one of the wrestlers in college
03:08and I play college football and I wrestle, say, at Iowa or Oklahoma State,
03:14my objective is going to be able to go to the National Football League
03:17because that's where the money is.
03:19Is that kind of one of the issues, too,
03:21why you don't see a lot of great talent in the heavyweight division?
03:25Yeah, that's definitely part of it.
03:27The other part of it is pro wrestling.
03:30I mean, if you look at the WWE roster or the AEW roster,
03:34you've got a lot of guys that either played in the NFL
03:37or were elite wrestlers in college and high school.
03:41They can go make money, you know, doing choreographed stuff.
03:45It's still tough work, but it's a lot easier and there's a lot more money
03:49for those big athletic guys to go over there and not get punched in the face.
03:55I mean, you know, if I had the option,
03:57if I could go make $2 million wrestling in the WWE
04:00or if I could just go fight a guy like, you know, Derek Lewis
04:04who could knock my head off for $100,000,
04:07I'm going to go to the WWE or, you know, somewhere else that's going to pay me
04:11and, you know, I can save my brain cells.
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