It has been a slow and strange start to the year in the UFC heavyweight division, but it feels like business is about to start picking up, beginning this weekend in St. Louis.
Through last weekend’s UFC 301 pay-per-view in Rio de Janeiro, there have been just 12 heavyweight bouts contested inside the Octagon, which is tied with light heavyweight for the fewest appearances by any division so far in 2024.
Of those pairings, just two have been matchups between top-10 opponents — the UFC 299 clash between Curtis Blaydes and Jailton Almeida, and the main event between Marcin Tybura and Tai Tuivasa that followed a week later in Las Vegas — and Blaydes is the lone member of the top five to grace the cage so far this year.
While there is understandable stasis atop the division as everyone waits for Jon Jones to return and face Stipe Miocic, as well as see what comes next for interim champ Tom Aspinall, the fact Ciryl Gane, Sergei Pavlovich, and Alexander Volkov have all been sidelined through the opening 15 events of the year means there hasn’t been any movement beyond the championship set either, which makes figuring things out beyond that group even more complicated, and keeps the division stuck in the mud.
Saturday night’s return to “The Gateway City” offers a headlining matchup between Derrick Lewis and Rodrigo Nascimento that could start to get the ball rolling in the big-boy ranks heading into the summer.
Lewis is a divisional mainstay and owner of the record for the most knockout wins in UFC history, and while he spent several years “in the mix” and challenged for gold twice, this is the position where he was always fit best — serving as an experienced and dangerous test for aspiring heavyweights and fellow veterans looking to push forward in the rankings.
Nascimento is a difficult fighter to grade at the moment, as the three-fight winning streak he carries into this weekend’s matchup with Lewis consists of decision wins over Tanner Boser, Ilir Latifi, and Don’Tale Mayes, the first two of whom are no longer with the UFC, while the latter continues to languish outside the rankings.
In his lone matchup against someone that eventually found their way in to the top 15, Chris Daukaus, he got knocked out in 45 seconds. For the record, he too is no longer with the promotion.
But he’s a big, sturdy competitor that trains with a great group at American Top Team, and you can only beat the people that are put in front of you, and over his last three outings, he’s done just that. If he can do it again on Saturday, his profile in the division will shift, and the number next to his name with shrink, positioning him for another step up in competition in the back half of the year.
Saturday’s fight card also offers a second look at 35-year-old Cuban heavyweight Robelis Despaigne, the 2012 Olympic bronze medallist in taekwondo who took out Josh Parisian in 18 seconds in his promotional debut at UFC 299. He’s earned five stoppage wins in as many starts, and registered the last four in 37 seconds combined, good for an average fight time of 9.25 seconds.
That is unlikely to continue as he continues to press forward in the division, but it also makes his clash with Waldo Cortes Acosta to open this weekend’s main card a little more intriguing that your typical matchup between unranked heavyweights on a Fight Night main card.
While Saturday’s two heavyweight pairings aren’t the kind of matchups that send a big jolt of energy through the division, they are a start, and between the contests that are already on the board for the summer and the expectation that the matchups everyone has been waiting for will get announced in the near future, there is a sense that we could have an eventful June, July, and August, which might then lead to an exhilarating November or December as well.
Next month at UFC 302, Jailton Almeida returns after suffering his first UFC defeat to take on Alexander Romanov, who looked solid in beating Blagoy Ivanov last time out. Three weeks later, Pavlovich and Volkov face off in an All-Russian battle in Saudia Arabia, giving us a pair of top-15 matchups to look forward to next month that should start to get things churning at the top of the division once more.
What will really bring the division to life will be the announcement of the delayed championship legacy fight between Jones and Miocic, and confirmation that Aspinall will be defending his interim title when the company ventures to Manchester for UFC 304 at the end of July.
Keeping the matchup between Jones and Miocic together in the wake of Jones’ injury was understandable — it’s a high profile pairing between arguably the greatest talent to ever grace the Octagon and the consensus top heavyweight in UFC history, while both men and the UFC wanted to see it happen — but it’s also starting to become one of those fights that just needs to hurry up and happen so we can get on with things as well, much like the summer showdown between Conor McGregor and Michael Chandler.
Jones has been out of action for more than a year again, and Miocic hasn’t fought since March 2021, last registering a win in August 2020, which feels like eons ago at this point.
Compounding things is that Aspinall took a huge risk and cashed in last November, knocking out Pavlovich in the first round to claim the interim title, and is the person many currently believe is the best heavyweight in the UFC. It seems likely that he’ll defend his title in Manchester, possibly against Gane, and then it’s all in the hands of the fight gods.
Most can agree that what everyone would like to see is for Jones to beat Miocic, Aspinall to defeat Gane, and those two square off in a title unification bout towards the end of the year; November at Madison Square Garden would be great (though that’s Alex Pereira’s home now) and T-Mobile Arena in December works as well.
But that fight still feels so far away from happening right now, both because we don’t have a date for Jones’ next bout or confirmation that Aspinall is defending his interim title, but also because so much can happen between now and everything coming together according to plan, not to mention that Miocic and Gane certainly have other ideas of their own as well.
What’s strange (perhaps only to me) is that this division felt fresh and alive as recently as this time last year, with Jones settling in on the throne, Aspinall, Pavlovich, and Almeida on the ascent, and Gane, Blaydes, and Volkov lingering as battle-tested terrors on the fringes of contention.
It honestly wouldn’t take a lot to get back there, but the fights have to break the right way and the critical matchups that can begin to unlock it all have to be announced.
Heavyweight is a division where momentum pays a major factor, both individually inside the Octagon and as a whole for the weight class.
Hopefully, this weekend is the start of things getting rolling in the big boy ranks once again.
