The Doggy Bag: Lesnar Era Begins

Weighing In

I thought your column about the Lesnar Effect was very well written. And I agree that there shouldn’t be much addition in weight classes in the UFC. For the casual fan, it’s hard enough to follow five champions. Adding all these ridiculous weight classes ruined boxing, myself, a semi-casual boxing fan couldn’t tell you what weight class Manny Pacquiao, Floyd Mayweather, Oscar De La Hoya, or even Roy Jones Jr. are in.

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However, I do believe the UFC should add two weight classes in order to add more excitement and fix a problem in another division. I believe the UFC should add the featherweight division, it has lots of talent and they almost always have great fights. Secondly, I think there is a big problem in the UFC light heavyweight division. From the get-go, the LHWs were basically heavyweights that were able to cut that much weight, resulting in big guys like Forrest, Tito [Ortiz], Chuck [Liddell], and Randy [Couture], dominating the division. It doesn’t leave room for the smaller light heavies who are great talents, but are forced to cut almost 30 pounds just to be competitive. Therefore, I believe the UFC should add a cruiserweight division. Anyone from 205-220 would suffice. That would create a new division that all the big LHWs could easily cut weight to, adding more exciting matches by not draining them beforehand. Plus, anyone in the 186-205 spectrum (Lyoto Machida, Wanderlei Silva and Rashad Evans) could actually have good fights by not being squashed. Another plus, is that smaller heavyweights like Cain Velasquez could actually be in a competitive division. I think the world of Cain, but I don’t think he can handle Brock Lesnar.

And, at 220 pounds, most of the bigger heavyweights probably wouldn’t want to cut that much weight. I mean would Shane Carwin or Gabriel Gonzaga want to get in that division?

Anyways, that’s just my idea, probably wouldn’t fly but it’s something to kick around.
-- Angelo Vila

Jason Probst, columnist: Thanks for writing in. I agree that too many weight classes is a big part of what killed boxing (in addition to four major sanctioning bodies, all of whom have the credibility of an aluminum siding salesman). It will be interesting to see what the UFC does, and I definitely think a featherweight division would be cool, but at the same time that would take away from the WEC's big draw (Urijah Faber, Mike Thomas Brown, and all the other tough guys in that class who will have many good bouts for years to come).

Cutting weight is always going to be part of the fights. Life isn't fair and that's kind of the attraction, for me, as opposed to rigorously engineering everything to be as "fair" as possible. Plus, if they do add something, I hope they don't call it "cruiserweight," because that word is just a curse. I mean, only one memorable cruiserweight has emerged in 30 years of boxing and that's Holyfield. Maybe Vassily Jirov but only fight geeks like us would know him.

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