Sherdog’s Top 10: Flashes in the Pan

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7. Shane Carwin

At first glance, Carwin might seem to be a strange choice for this list. After all, he did win an interim UFC heavyweight title during Brock Lesnar’s absence, and if referee Josh Rosenthal had been slightly less willing to watch Lesnar eat punch after punch at UFC 116, he might have been the undisputed heavyweight champion. The Sherdog staff was divided on the issue, with several panelists refusing to rank Carwin on this basis.

If we examine the entirety of Carwin’s career, however, it becomes clear the mammoth Coloradan’s actual time as a top fighter was exceptionally brief. He had a grand total of six fights in the UFC spread over more than three years and exactly one win over a legitimate top-10 opponent: Frank Mir. Rosenthal was, in fact, willing to watch Lesnar eat ferocious punches, and Carwin gassed out shortly thereafter. His return engagement against Junior dos Santos devolved into a hard-to-watch, three-round beating that left Carwin’s face a mask of blood and swollen tissue, and he never fought again.

For that brief moment between the Mir fight and the debacle with Lesnar, Carwin was one of the scariest fighters on the face of the planet. An enormous man with inhuman power in his 4XL fists -- trainer Trevor Wittman still talks about Carwin literally destroying his favorite focus mitts -- nobody could eat the Coloradan’s punches and hope to survive for long.

Injuries, however, ruined Carwin’s career. After the Lesnar fight, he suffered multiple neck and back issues that pulled him from several bouts, and his stint as a coach on “The Ultimate Fighter 16” that would have led to an anticipated scrap with Roy Nelson was called off due to a knee injury. Carwin officially retired in May of 2013, citing his injury history as the major reason. If only Carwin’s body held up longer, what a career he might have had.

Number 6 » He has hung around the regional scene in the intervening five years and even strung together a reasonable winning streak, but his career as a high-level fighter has long since passed, if it ever really existed in the first place.