With the announcement of Strikeforce's upcoming heavyweight tournament, most MMA fans were given two options with which to react.
Basically, you could be optimistic about Strikeforce's chances of creating something stellar and classic. Or you could be pessimistic and doubt the possibility that this tournament will be a success.
Sadly, the latter is not uncommon.
Most of the detractors usually go on to make unfair comparisons between Strikeforce's heavyweight stable and the UFC's big men. But to act as if the two divisions are not on par with each other is completely asinine.
If anything, I would see this as the one division that Strikeforce has the advantage in. For one, the top UFC heavyweights will almost all be out of action for the first half of 2011, while this tournament should be one of the calender's highlights.
The news of all these great heavyweights meeting made me think of an appearance Josh Barnett had on Ariel Helwani's The MMA Hour in September, where he announced his recent signing with the San Jose based promotion, and complimented their heavyweight division.
“I’d say it’s a pretty super, incredible division, honestly. If you take our top four or five [heavyweights] against the top four or five in the UFC, hell, we have more wins than they even have fights,” said Barnett.
Whether you favor one promotion over the other, you can’t say Barnett isn’t stating a fact there.
Barnett went on to say, “The UFC, I think they’re not really in a spot where they need to acquire anybody. It’s probably better for them to just take a newbie and make him look great than to actually have to deal with great fighters.”
While that is certainly up for debate, you can’t deny that Strikeforce is a collection of many names we have known for years in this sport, while the UFC heavyweights—with the exception of Frank Mir—all made their bones within the last couple years in the octagon.
But, instead of just stating opinions on who I think has the better collection of giants, let's look at Barnett's statistic, along with some other comparisons which may or may not prove anything, but should be of interest.
Top five UFC heavyweights: Cain Velasquez (champion), Brock Lesnar, Junior Dos Santos, Shane Carwin, Frank Mir
Top five Strikeforce heavyweights: Alistair Overeem (champion), Fabricio Werdum, Fedor Emelianenko, Antonio Silva, Josh Barnett
Combined record of top UFC heavyweights: 52-9
Combined record of top Strikeforce heavyweights: 121-24-1-(1) (nine of those losses were from Overeem at light heavyweight)
Longest career of top UFC heavyweights: Frank Mir July 14, 2001 (next is Shane Carwin Oct. 14, 2005 )
Longest career of top Strikeforce heavyweights: Josh Barnett Jan. 11, 1997 (next is Alistair Overeem Oct. 24, 1999)
Shortest career of top UFC heavyweights: Brock Lesnar June 2, 2007
Shortest career of top Strikeforce heavyweights: Antonio Silva March 6, 2005
Ages of top UFC heavyweights: Velasquez 28, Lesnar 33, Mir 31, Carwin 36, Dos Santos 26
Ages of top Strikeforce heavyweights: Overeem 30, Silva 31, Werdum 33, Emelianenko 34, Barnett 33
Biggest wins of top UFC heavyweights: Randy Couture, Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, Fabricio Werdum, Frank Mir, Ben Rothwell, Brock Lesnar, Gabriel Gonzaga, Mirko Cro Cop, Roy Nelson, Brendan Schaub, Stefan Struve, Shane Carwin, Tim Sylvia.
Biggest wins of top Strikeforce heavyweights: Randy Couture, Andrei Arlovski, Alistair Overeem, Aleksander Emelianenko, Vitor Belfort, Brandon Vera, Jeff Monson, Sergei Kharitonov, Mirko Cro Cop, Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, Brett Rogers, Tim Sylvia, Fedor Emelianenko.
MMA accomplishments of top UFC heavyweights: UFC heavyweight title (3), Interim UFC heavyweight title (2)
MMA accomplishments of top Strikeforce heavyweights: Pride heavyweight title, youngest UFC heavyweight champion, Cage Rage heavyweight title, EliteXC heavyweight title, Interim Dream heavyweight title, Strikeforce heavyweight title, Rings heavyweight champion 2001, Rings open-weight champion 2002, WAMMA heavyweight champion, King of Pancrase, Pride heavyweight Grand Prix champion 2004, Pride open-weight Grand Prix runner-up 2006.
This article was originally posted on TheMMATruth.com
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Source: http://bleacherreport.com/articles/568684-ufc-vs-strikeforce-comparing-the-heavyweights
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