With the Fall of Shane Carwin, Is Alistair Overeem the Last Hope for the Mega-Heavyweights?

http://www.bloodyelbow.com/2011/6/13/2221822/ufc-131-shane-carwin-junior-dos-santos-alistair-overeem

Just a year ago, heavyweight behemoths Brock Lesnar and Shane Carwin fought to unify the UFC's heavyweight and interim heavyweight belts at UFC 116. Both fighters had to cut weight to make the 265lb weight limit. Meanwhile, mega-heavies like Alistair Overeem (250+lbs), Antonio Silva (265+lbs), and Brett Rogers (265lbs) were thundering around Strikeforce's cages.

Many said the heavyweight division needed to be split up into two divisions to give the 230lb guys a fair chance.

With Junior dos Santos' (239lbs) win over a shrunken looking Shane Carwin (250lbs) at UFC 131 following Cain Velasquez (244lbs) shellacking of Brock Lesnar at UFC 121, some are saying the age of the giant heavyweight is over. Jonathan Snowden opined to that effect at SBNation:

And just like that, the era of the giant heavyweight was over and done - almost before it even started. The talking point last year was that giant heavyweights like Carwin and Brock Lesnar were the wave of the future. That men cutting weight from upwards of 285 pounds down to the heavyweight limit of 265 would smash Hulk style. But we forgot one thing - speed, as we've learned over and over again in sports, kills.

Carwin was like the tortoise in the tortoise and the hare parable, only an alternate reality fairy tale in which the rabbit nearly beats him to death. He plodded around the cage, seemingly content with Junior strolling over occasionally to punch him in the face. Historically, it's a result that was predictable. Over and over again we've seen smaller, quicker, and more skilled heavyweights win UFC gold. Randy Couture, Kevin Randleman, and Bas Rutten were blown up light heavyweights. Andrei Arlovski walloped bigger men with speed and finesse. And the greatest heavyweight of all time, Fedor Emelianenko, weighs 220 pounds, much of that ice cream.
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When (dos Santos and Velasquez) meet in the middle, neither will approach 250 pounds. The age of the mammoth is over - killed by Junior dos Santos Saturday in Vancouver.

Anthony Pace had a similar take at Head Kick Legend:

When Brock Lesnar first claimed the UFC title from Randy Couture, many hailed the arrival of "super-heavyweights", mammoth athletes who barely fit within the 265 lb weight limit of the division. It was to be fighters like Lesnar and Carwin who, even if they had no diverse set of refined skills, would dominate the division based on sheer size and strength. But as Royce Gracie proved those many years and many UFCs ago, finely honed technique can bring down the biggest man.

That's not to say that men like Lesnar and Carwin are unskilled. It's just that many seemed to forget the likes of Couture, Fedor Emelianenko, and Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira. Many were obsessed with the sheer size of the fresh behemoths entering the sport.

It's taken Velasquez with his crisp kickboxing combos, dominant wrestling, and relentless pace to remind us that time in the gym honing one's skills is the only way to maximize genetic potential. And it's taken dos Santos's lightning-quick hand speed, unparalleled precision, and fearlessness in a firefight to prove that size is not the most intimidating aspect of a fighter. It's befitting that dos Santos is a protégé of Nogueira, who made his legend slaying larger fighters.

It definitely looks like the UFC's giants have been slain by a smaller, nimbler breed of heavyweight. But over at Strikeforce a certain Alistair Overeem will be straining the scales against Fabricio Werdum at this weekend's second installment of the Strikeforce heavyweight Grand Prix.

For his part, Overeem wants to unify the belts. Per the Toronto Sun:

"If I win the (Strikeforce heavyweight Grand Prix) tournament, I personally - and I believe many fans are with me - would love to see the winner of the tournament go against the UFC heavyweight champion," the 6-foot-5, 265-pound Overeem said.

Will an Overeem win (potentially combined with a Brett Rogers win against Josh Barnett) mean the era of the mammoths is NOT over?

i dont waste my time with the Super Heavyweight discussions in boxing or MMA, its bullshit and bush league

ppl trying to get to cute, oh my god hes so big, ya know what fuckers, there were big 6'7 mother fuckerss in 1930 also

Overeem may be 250 now jacked to the gills, he is still a former LHW who muscled up his frame than he is a truly Mega HW who cuts to get down.

We're over the new breed of HW. Turns out there wasnt one.

We are now on the new breed of LHW...until somebody smacks Bones.

Techinically there still is a new breed of HW, guys like Cain and JDS and these super athletic yet very skilled heavys, there really wasn't guys like this years back. Size similar, but different otherwise.



The SHW isn't dead, wait till we see guys who cut to 265, yet have skills to match.

If I did the split I'd align them like this (SF & UFC)

SHW
Struve
Rothwell
Nelson
Morecraft
Mittrione
Mir
Lesnar
Hunt
Einemo
Carwin
Browne
Broughten
Kharitonov
Reem
Barnett
Johnson
Rogers
Silva

HW
Berry
Crocop
JDS
Big Nog
Russow
Cain
Walker
Werdum
Sefo
Griggs
Emelianenko
Kyle

Either
AA
Beltran
Scahub
Rosa
Kongo
Del Rosario
Cormier
Valintijen
Herman

awful divisions.

Boxing's HW division starts at 200 for a reason. Agility and hand speed is just a rarity at 265+. The strength you net vs the speed and coordination you lose is why big guys are better on basketball courts or on a football field than they are trying to avoid punches to the chin.

I'm curious to what post Wolf made at 4am and then deleted in this thread?

Farmer1906 wrote:

exactly, the article mentions Fedor multiple times, and correctly calls him the goat, but only in passing was the giant who just mauled him mentioned.

Wolfgangsta wrote:

awful divisions.

Boxing's HW division starts at 200 for a reason. Agility and hand speed is just a rarity at 265+. The strength you net vs the speed and coordination you lose is why big guys are better on basketball courts or on a football field than they are trying to avoid punches to the chin.

Klitschko brothers are pretty big. So was Lewis.

The reason u see big guys(and smaller guys ala AI) on the b-ball court or the football field is cause they can make more $$$ without getting punched in the face.