Deepest Division In UFC

[Susan]

Thanks for doing that. By my quick and dirty count, Anderson Silva is 1-2 against the middleweight top 10 (and his win came 4 years ago). How is that even possible. Its nuts how quickly the guard changed at middleweight in the ufc, just crazy.

Well, Chael Sonnen, Forrest and Bonner all happened and Okami left the division. I mean, his last win was in October of 2012...

[Bernman]

That's like showing up last to the Royal Rumble. He'll have 'cleared out the division' because he's been on the shelf long enough for every other fighter to have taken inescapable losses to someone he once beat?

Well, the reasons are largely immaterial because we were originally talking about number of viable challengers to the champion in the division as one of the criteria for deepest division, not about the impressiveness of Pettis' resume. That's more where the quality win discussion came in.

Anyways it's a half-truth at best to claim the reason LW lacks viable challengers is Pettis' layoff. Actually, that should have bought time to increase the # of challengers. That's what happened at MW and FW with Weidman's and Aldo's relative inactivity. Pettis' original title defense b4 he became injured was to be against Josh Thomson, he of a 1-fight win streak vs. Nate Diaz at the time. Then during Pettis' layoff, who deserved a title shot that didn't get one? RDA? He ended up getting one right when it was deserved. Khabib? We didn't know the worth at the time of his only legit good win, against RDA, and anyways a couple months after he blew his ACL. The rest at no point deserved a shot or lost to Pettis. The primary reasons for lack of viable challengers at LW is like I said the combo of depth of really good fighters but a limited amount of truly great fighters toward the top.