Shane Carwin, Cain Velasquez, and Junior Dos Santos are hyped as the next generation of top UFC heavyweights. In the past few months we’ve seen Carwin and Velasquez defeat legitimate heavyweight competition, but in the process they exposed holes in their game that suggest they are far from being elite fighters. Nobody should be surprised; between the three of them they have 26 fights combined.
Is it any shock that six fights into his MMA career, Cain Velasquez doesn’t have the ability to deal with Cheick Kongo’s kickboxing? He has serious work to do on his striking, but this is a very young fighter that showed a tremendous ability to recover from serious danger and still put on a dominating performance.
A big part of the problem here is hype thrust upon these fighters by overeager fans looking for the next big thing. Not to mention hype from their camp members, who should really think twice before creating unrealistic expectations for their teammates to live up to. Is there any way Cain Velasquez can avoid disappointing people when his coach calls him the best fighter in the history of AKA?
Junior Dos Santos is fighting Justin McCulley in August. Many people don’t understand it; Ariel Helwani claimed it made “no sense” on Steve Cofield’s show last night. Actually, it makes a lot of sense. He has a lot of work to do on his wrestling and ground game, and there’s no reason to put him in do or die situations before his game has fully developed. Similarly, throwing Carwin and Cain against one another at this point would be a ridiculous choice. Both men proved they can hang with the elite, but they’d be better off getting a few more training camps in before facing guys like Couture, Mir, and Nogueira, let alone a guy like Fedor. This isn’t to say Cain couldn’t beat any one of them right now; perhaps he could. But if he did it would be a result of brute strength and youth, and not because he’s developed a complete game.
The winner of Randy and Nogueira should get the next title shot, because the next generation of heavyweights needs more time. More time to develop their skills, and more time to develop name recognition with UFC fans so the fans care about their eventual title shots. Instead of fighting each other now in a match that means nothing to casual fans, they can wait until it means something.
The problem is there’s very little inbetween guys like Cheick Kongo and the champion in the UFC heavyweight division. There aren’t a lot of lateral options, you can only go to the top or to the cans. Unfortunately, the weakness of the division may result in these guys biting off more than they can chew at this point in their careers.