Former UFC heavyweight champion Josh Barnett trashed the current state of the weight class, saying it is full of “sloppy” fighters.
Barnett, an MMA legend who beat Randy Couture for the UFC heavyweight title in 2002, has been around the sport for well over 30 years, so he knows a thing or two about the heavyweight division. Since last competing in MMA back in 2016, Barnett has been training the next crop of pro fighters, including current UFC bantamweight Victor Henry.
Barnett is still a big fan of the sport, and he often offers up his critiques of MMA on his social media. One thing he’s critical about these days is the state of the UFC heavyweight division, which he believes has hit an all-time low, something which fans routinely complain about on X.
Josh Barnett Trashes UFC Heavyweight Division
Speaking to Damon Martin of MMAFighting.com, Barnett explained what’s wrong with the current state of heavyweights.
“The heavyweight division has been the worst it’s been for a while now,” Barnett said, while noting that, while there are some skilled talents like Tom Aspinall and Ciryl Gane at the top, they are essentially unicorns in the weight class.
“Nowadays it’s just a bunch of big, heavy sloppy kickboxing or big, heavy sloppy boxing with wrestling but nothing else. 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 (with Tai Tuivasa vs. Louie Sutherland), it’s kind of rough going. Not to be derogatory to these guys or anything.”
Josh Barnett Offers Solution to UFC Heavyweight Division
In an effort to improve the state of the UFC heavyweight division, Barnett offered up a potential solution, which is a tournament featuring UFC heavyweight fighters.
“I think when you talk about eight man or 16 man (tournaments), that’s what the UFC needs to do. 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,” Barnett said.
“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.”
The UFC has not held a tournament since 2012, when the promotion had a four-man flyweight tournament, though it took place over the course of several events. So, the odds of them doing another tournament don’t seem high. Still, Barnett is right that the heavyweight division is super inconsistent right now. While you do have some elite fighters at the top like Aspinall and Gane, plus some prospects on the rise like Josh Hokit and Gable Steveson, you also have a ton of guys at the bottom of the weight class who, quite frankly, aren’t world-class athletes and not deserving of a UFC roster spot.
In many ways, the UFC heavyweight division should be the promotion’s marquee weight class, since it features the biggest humans and thus potentially the biggest knockouts. But it just isn’t good right now, and Barnett was right to criticize it.
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