UFC 188: Cain Velasquez and the Top 10 Heavyweights in MMA History
If you could somehow take one Junior dos Santos overhand right out of the MMA time stream, Cain Velasquez is undefeated.
Not only undefeated, but virtually unthreatened. Velasquez, who defends his lineal belt this Saturday at UFC 188 against interim champ Fabricio Werdum, combines cardiovascular endurance, punching power and speed and freight-train takedowns to make him one of the most dangerous hand-to-hand fighters on planet Earth.
Only his history of injuries keeps him from being a more well-recognized presence on the sporting landscape. Even so, the champ is still freely recognized as one of the best heavyweights ever.
Who are the others? Glad you asked. Here are the top 10 heavyweights in alllllll of MMA history. We did the research, we watched the fights. All you have to do is read and agree.
Fighters are ranked based on their records, skill sets, accomplishments in the sport, quality of opposition and, to a lesser extent, head-to-head performance against other candidates. Only fighters who spent a substantial portion of their careers at the weight class are eligible. Let's get it on.
Honorable Mentions
1 of 11
Listed in no particular order:
— Igor Vovchanchyn
— Frank Mir
— Marco Ruas
— Fabricio Werdum
— Masakatsu Funaki
— Don Frye
— Tim Sylvia
— Bas Rutten
— Ricco Rodriguez
— Ken Shamrock
— Mark Kerr
10. Andrei Arlovski
2 of 11
Record: 24-10 (1)
Notable wins: Fabricio Werdum, Tim Sylvia, Roy Nelson, Travis Browne
Achievements: UFC heavyweight champion (February 2005—April 2006), improbable late-career return to contention
Andrei Arlovski had just turned 32 when, in February 2011, Sergei Kharitonov knocked him out. It was the fourth consecutive defeat for the Belarusian, three of them at the end of an opponent's fist.
So he was done, right? Too many clicks on the fightometer had turned his jaw to glass. Nothing to be done when you're degraded and exposed that baldly.
That's when it got interesting.
Arlovski was famous enough that he could have moved on from fighting. Instead, he clawed his back up through the MMA hinterlands to regain a spot in the UFC. That was last June. Since then, all he's done at age 36 is go 3-0, including last month's instant classic with Travis Browne.
Arlovski is now in real, actual title contention, albeit in a division that thins out markedly below the top echelon. Arlovski also loses a few points because of a weak field of competition over the years.
Nevertheless, his present resurgence pushes him ahead of others who lost their groove—and many fights—late in their careers. That plus his accomplishments in the past are enough to land him on the big board.
9. Dan Severn
3 of 11
Record: 101-19-7
Notable wins: Ken Shamrock, Oleg Taktarov, Forrest Griffin, Paul Varelans
Achievements: UFC Hall of Famer, UFC 5 tournament champion, UFC "Ultimate Ultimate" 1995 champion, UFC superfight champion, won 100 freaking fights
Did Dan Severn pad his professional record toward the end of his career? Sure, but only for those last eight or so.
Was Severn boring to watch? Boy howdy, was he ever.
Would Severn (and most of his contemporaries, for that matter) pale in comparison to the diamond-honed cyborgs we take for granted today? Yes.
Despite these inconvenient truths, you have to give The Beast his due. The first great wrestler in MMA history frequently tangled with and often beat the best fighters of his day.
Who among those who saw it can forget his UFC semifinal win, when the mustachioed madman dropped what felt like a million neanderthal-level knees on the movie-star skull of Oleg Taktarov? Sure, it came after about 17 hours of laying on him, but never mind that.
Never mind, as well, his quixotic quest for that 100th win, which took years of carnival fighting in Texas and Alberta to finally achieve.
The fact is, he was a pioneer of his time and remains a legend of the sport. There is no dislodging Dan Severn.
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8. Josh Barnett
4 of 11
Record: 33-7
Notable wins: Randy Couture, Frank Mir, Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, Dan Severn
Achievements: UFC heavyweight champion (March 2002), Pancrase openweight champion (August 2003—May 2004), 2006 Pride Heavyweight Grand Prix finalist, 2011 Strikeforce Heavyweight Grand Prix finalist
It's hard to know how Josh Barnett's career would have played out without the three positive steroids tests. After all, he and we have one of those failures to blame for the fact that he never defended his UFC title, you know, the one he won from Randy Couture. It's also the direct cause of Barnett having spent most of his prime in lower-tier organizations, at least when he wasn't out of the sport altogether.
But the catch-wrestling dynamo still did enough to make this list. Inside the ring or cage, he's been a picture of consistency. Only once in his 18-year career has he lost two fights in a row.
Barnett is currently aiming for a late-2015 return to action. We'll see if that yields any fruit. At age 37, the charismatic Barnett doesn't have a great many more fights left in him, it would seem.
7. Junior Dos Santos
5 of 11
Record: 17-3
Notable wins: Cain Velasquez, Frank Mir, Fabricio Werdum, Mirko Cro Cop, Mark Hunt
Achievements: UFC heavyweight champion (November 2011—December 2012), 12 wins by knockout
Over the past three years, Junior dos Santos has taken a lifetime of punishment. Not only were those two losses to Velasquez demoralizing to his title hopes, they also left his face puffed out to circus-novelty levels. Ditto his two wins in that time, over Mark Hunt and Stipe Miocic.
It's easy to focus on those visuals and forget his own devastating power, or the fact that he's still only 31 (in normal years, anyway) or the fact that he's the only non-Cain fighter to hold the lineal title since 2010.
Maybe he lost that trilogy with Velasquez, but if we're pitting him against some of the more time-honored greats of the weight class, I know who I'd put my money on.
6. Mark Coleman
6 of 11
Record: 16-10
Notable wins: Don Frye (2x), Igor Vovchanchyn, Dan Severn, Mauricio "Shogun" Rua
Achievements: 2000 Pride Openweight Grand Prix champion, UFC Hall of Famer, UFC 10 and 11 tournament champion, UFC heavyweight champion (February 1997—July 1997)
I want you to do one thing right now. I want you to "give it up," for The Godfather of Ground n' Pound.
I know, I know, it's a shopworn title. Not to mention the fact that there are other people who can lay claim to it (Allan Goes, anyone?). No arguing, though, that Mark Coleman did indeed change the MMA game, blending wrestling and striking to spectacular effect.
That Grand Prix final with Vovchanchyn was a classic wrestler-striker matchup. Coleman tilted that fight in his favor with brutal ground blows, eventually compelling the Russian to tap.
More recent arrivals to the sport might only remember Coleman as the dessicated specimen who wheezed his way through a loss to Rua in 2009. If that's the case for you, do yourself a favor and check out his old library. You'll be glad you did.
5. Mirko 'Cro Cop' Filipovic
7 of 11
Record: 31-11-2 (1)
Notable wins: Mark Coleman, Josh Barnett (3x), Igor Vovchanchyn, Wanderlei Silva (2x), Kazushi Sakuraba
Achievements: 2006 Pride Grand Prix Heavyweight champion, 23 wins by knockout
"Right leg, hospital; left leg, cemetery."
If you're the kind of person who is tired of that quote, I pity you. I don't want to live in your world. Those six words will forever live in the canon of cold-blooded stuff you say to somebody before you knock their head through the ring ropes.
Mirko Cro Cop doesn't need an introduction from the likes of me. The guy's a legend in his own time, a hero in his native Croatia who is still inspiring strong devotion nine years after his arguable peak in the sport.
Two months ago his resume took on another coat of polish (assuming he has a metal resume) when he avenged the most infamous loss of his career. Cro Cop proverbially died by the proverbial sword in 2007, when Gabriel Gonzaga knocked him nerveless with a head kick.
It was just his second fight in the UFC. But this April, in Cro Cop's return to the old Octagon after three-plus years away, he scored a definitive TKO on his unlikely nemesis.
When will the legend stop growing? You got me, man. You got me.
4. Randy Couture
8 of 11
Record: 19-11
Notable wins: Pedro Rizzo (2x), Vitor Belfort, Tim Sylvia, Kevin Randleman
Achievements: three-time UFC heavyweight champion, UFC 13 tournament champion, UFC Hall of Famer
Though a full picture of Randy Couture's career would require one to also discuss his accomplishments at light heavyweight, where he was a two-time UFC champ, for this list we'll focus solely on his heavyweight bona fides.
It's pretty good that those bona fides are strong enough on their own to land Couture at No. 4 on this list. Pret-tyyyy, pret-tyyyy good. Couture and his signature brand of cerebral wrestling and dirty boxing saw him through so many battles, all the way up to his retirement at age 47.
Couture has gone fairly quiet recently. Before that, he was feuding with the UFC and publicly watching his Las Vegas gym, Xtreme Couture, lose most of its high-profile clients to one thing or another.
Still, what he did in the cage should keep him on the heavyweight division's Mount Rushmore indefinitely. Unless Cro Cop makes some kind of crazy late-career run. Ask Andrei Arlovski about what that can do for you.
3. Cain Velasquez
9 of 11
Record: 13-1
Notable wins: Junior dos Santos (2x), Brock Lesnar, Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, Antonio Silva (2x)
Achievements: Two-time and reigning UFC heavyweight champion
I don't think it's a matter of whether Cain Velasquez will one day top this list. I think it's a matter of when.
But he's not there yet. Beating Werdum this Saturday might bump him up into silver-medal position. (And to be fair, a win for Werdum would skyrocket him waaaaay above the honorable mentions page.)
Cain's full arsenal of offense, heady defense, stoic style and tireless (almost literally, sometimes) work ethic in the gym and the cage have combined to create a nightmare for opponents.
As it turns out, he's a nightmare for himself, too, given that drumbeat of injuries. If anything will hold down his career, it will be that.
It's why there's an interim champion right now in Werdum. It's why UFC 188 will only host his third fight in the past three years. He didn't fight at all in 2014. First it was a shoulder, then it was a knee, both breaking apart in maddening iterations.
Fans should hope it's all behind him. If that's really the case, they could be poised to watch the greatest heavyweight of all time going about the process of establishing himself as such. It's all up to him now.
2. Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira
10 of 11
Record: 34-9-1 (1)
Notable wins: Randy Couture, Mark Coleman, Mirko Cro Cop, Fabricio Werdum, Josh Barnett, Tim Sylvia
Achievements: First Pride heavyweight champion (November 2001—March 2003), interim UFC champion (February 2008—December 2008), Pride interim heavyweight champion (November 2003—December 2004)
Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira began his MMA career in 1999, and it spans 45 pro fights. Five of his nine pro losses have come in just his last eight contests, when he was well into his 30s and the wear and tear was piling up.
But forget about that part for a second. Think back to 2006, when Big Nog was 29-4-1 (1) and striding into the UFC for the first time. Fresh off a win over Barnett, the steel-tough jiu-jitsu finisher was one of the best in the world at any weight class. He had pure classics under his belt, most notably his come-from-behind submission of Mirko Cro Cop that netted him the Pride interim title.
The guy was just indomitable. And now, at age 39, the flesh appears less willing than that spirit. A loser of two straight and four of his last six, Big Nog has only competed three times in the past four years.
We'll see how he does this August, when he's scheduled to take on Stefan Struve. Nothing he does can erase his accomplishments, but here's hoping bad memories never overtake the good in fans' collective consciousness.
1. Fedor Emelianenko
11 of 11
Record: 34-4 (1)
Notable wins: Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira (2x), Mark Coleman (2x), Mirko Cro Cop, Andrei Arlovski
Achievements: Pride heavyweight champion (March 2003–December 2006), 2004 Pride Heavyweight Grand Prix champion, WAMMA heavyweight champion (July 2008—November 2009)
You rang?
A lot of people thought Fedor Emelianenko's stranglehold on this spot might erode with the years. If anything, it's gotten stronger.
Emelianenko was never amazing in any one phase. He was just very, very good in all of them. Like another great, an Anderson Silva, Emelianenko was a combat computer, always a few moves ahead of the moment.
Emelianenko was spared the ignominy of a bad ending when his handlers fed him smaller aging big names for nice paydays and easy Ws. Those were his final three fights, all wins. Fairly or not, the cagey move washed away the taste of three consecutive losses in the Strikeforce promotion. That makes a difference.
Of course, it goes beyond optics. With some of his contemporaries still casting about for some kind of golden retirement gift, Fedor is sitting pretty in retirement. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, and as the "golden age" fighters fade and depart, perhaps none is benefiting more from nostalgia than the blank-faced, paunch-gutted, stone-cold killer from Stary Oskol.
Maybe Velasquez or someone else will catch him some day. But for now and the foreseeable future, long live the king.
Scott Harris writes about MMA for Bleacher Report. For more stuff like this, follow Scott on Twitter.
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