Given the current state of the UFC heavyweight division, it’s possible that the winner of Saturday’s main event pairing between Sergei Pavlovich and Curtis Blaydescould find themselves fighting for championship gold next time out.
As the action in the Octagon returns to Las Vegas and the UFC APEX, here is how the upper tier of the big boy division currently lines up:
Champ: Jon Jones
No.1: Ciryl Gane
No. 2: Stipe Miocic
No. 3: Sergei Pavlovich
No. 4: Curtis Blaydes
No. 5: Tom Aspinall
Jones won the title in his return to action after three years away in March, making swift work of Gane. He’s expected to take on Miocic and that bout was all but announced for July following his win at UFC 285, but it seems like making that fight happen has hit some snags and a November clash at Madison Square Garden in New York City is more likely, if you believe how things are being discussed on Twitter.
Gane hasn’t fought since that March setback and is now 0-2 in bouts for the undisputed title, so he’ll likely need a little “reputation rehab” before getting back into the championship mix, and Aspinall is working his way back from a knee injury suffered 15 seconds into his meeting with Blaydes over the summer in London.
That leaves this weekend’s combatants as the most likely “next in line” options if either things don’t work out between Jones and Miocic or for the winner of that fight in early 2024.
WHERE THEY STAND
Pavlovich is the top ascending talent in the division at the moment — the lone member of the Top 5 that hasn’t lost to anyone currently on the UFC roster, and a menacing powerhouse entering Saturday’s contest on a five-fight winning streak, where each of those victories came in the first round.
The 30-year-old Russian was out of action for all of 2020 and 2021 for various reasons — global pandemic, visa issues, etc. —but returned with a vengeance last year, smashing Shamil Abdurakhimov in London in March before going back-to-back against Derrick Lewis and Tai Tuivasa in July and December, needing 55 and 54 seconds to dispatch each man, respectively.
Now 17-1 as a professional — his lone loss came in his UFC debut against Alistair Overeem, which was a colossal step up in competition at the time — Pavlovich is a massive, marauding question mark towards the top of the division because his ceiling has yet to be defined.
Blaydes is at the start of his eighth year on the UFC roster and returns to as Vegas with a 17-3 record with one No Contest record, built largely on his overall success inside the Octagon.
The Chicagoland native is 12-3 with that one No Contest — he tested positive for weed in a fight he won in the second round — in 15 UFC appearances, and two of those losses came against departed former champion Francis Ngannou, including the first fight of his UFC run.
He’s 7-1 over his last eight fights, has developed crisp boxing to accompany his standout wrestling, and is the kind of overall plus athlete that has always seemed like the ideal makeup to dominate the heavyweight division. While his most recent appearance ended in 15 seconds due to an injury, his bout against Chris Daukaus in March showed why Blaydes is so dangerous, as the former JuCoNational champion wrestler didn’t need to bother with takedowns in order to get the former Philly cop out of there in the second round.
This was the obvious matchup to make after Pavlovich dispatched Tuivasa last December, and now, with Ngannou and the UFC having parted ways and things being unsettled beyond the Top 5, it genuinely feels like a fight that carries more significance than we’ve talked about in the preamble to it taking place tomorrow evening.
THE STAKES
As always, nothing has been stated or promised or suggested (as far as I know) about the winner of this being in line for a title shot next, and these sorts of things are always fluid because the direction of these divisionschanges like the weather.
With that being said, it’s tough not to look at the case laid out in the opening of this piece and see how it all makes sense.
Given that it’s mid-April and UFC 290 — the July International Fight Week event — where the Jones-Miocic matchup was expected to take place already features a pair of championship matchups, it seems likely that the heavyweight clash is getting pushed back for one reason or another.
Jones has talked about never having fought in New York City (or his home state, period, for that matter) and Dana White has mentioned the heavyweight champion going dark since his return win over Gane in March, all of which paints a picture of a fight that isn’t going to come together and become the marquee matchup on a star-studded show that is set to take place (holds up hands to count on fingers) 11 weeks from now.
A short build is fine for the June event in Vancouver with the trilogy bout between Amanda Nunes and Juliana Pena because people aren’t all that pumped about that matchup, but a heavyweight fight of this magnitude merits a big build, the big sell, and that’s not going to happen win three months.
So that creates a little room for the fighters at the top of the rankings to really jockey for position in the pecking order, except Gane hasn’t said much since his quick loss to Jones and would need — one would assume — at least one quality win to get things moving in the right direction before he’d be considered for another championship opportunity, while Aspinall (a) has yet to beat a Top 5 opponent, (b) doesn’t have an official return date yet, and (c) might even need more than one win to put himself in the mix.
It feels to me like a dominant, decisive win for either man would put them in pole position to challenge for the title next time out, while Pavlovich could get there even with a hard-fought win on the cards, as a six-fight winning streak with five finishes and a gruelling victory over Blaydes looks tremendous.
The 32-year-old American probably has a more difficult road simply because the UFC hasn’t ever seemed in a hurry to get him into the championship picture, so a wrestling-heavy win this weekend where he effectively neutralizes Pavlovich may be a harder sell.
But who else is there? At this moment, no one, really, which is why performing on Saturday is crucial for both men.
THE POTENTIAL TWIST
Now, Jones has said and deleted a lot of things on Twitter over the years, so everything he posts to the social media platform needs to be taken with the kind of gigantic salt licks you’d find stuck in the corner of every horse stall in America, but he was musing last week about how cool it would be to have his last fight be at Madison Square Garden against the greatest heavyweight in UFC history.
And d’you know what? It does actually sound like a really smart way for the often-embattled standout to step away.
Go out, beat Miocic — I think he would beat Miocic — and then ride off into the sunset before one of these other guys gets a chance to knock you from your perch. He would leave as a two-division champion with a sterling resume and a claim to being the best fighter of all time, at least from a talent perspective, depending on how much you want to penalize him for all positive tests and police incidents over the years.
If that is a scenario that is on the table, it ratchets up the importance of this weekend’s contest even more because if Jones did happen to bounce, the winner of Saturday’s meeting between the No. 3 and No. 4 fighters in the heavyweight division would almost by default have to be considered should a bout for the vacant title come together in the early months of 2024.
Miocic is 40 years old, has shown no interest in fighting Blaydes thus far, and probably isn’t hanging around to battle an younger, less established name at this point; win or lose, I think he bounces after the Jones fight, if and when it comes together.
Gane still feels like he’d need a win — which he could get between now and Q1 of next year, for sure — and Aspinall is still in his same place, so the winner of this weekend’s headlining contest would have to feel incredibly good about their standing in the division.
What’s more is that it’s not like there are an abundance of new names surging up the division ladder that the UFC is going to be keep to hustle into heavyweight title fights.
Tuivasa has shown he can’t quite get over that final hump, Alexander Volkov has already lost to Gane and Blaydesand would need a couple more quality wins to erase the memory of those fights, and while Sergey Spivac is on a nice run, he feels like someone that is going to have to win a dozen consecutive bouts and still get lucky before an opportunity comes his way.
The one guy worth keeping an eye on is Jailton Almeida, who is 4-0 in the UFC, 18-2 overall, and set to face Jairzinho Rozenstruik next month in his first main event assignment. But there is still a lot of ground to cover between potentially beating “Bigi Boy” next month and fighting for championship gold even a year from now.
Could he get there? Sure, he’s skilled, and the UFC is clearly giving him a push, but the 31-year-old Brazilian has also always felt a little undersized for the division and needs to pass the same critical tests that still await Aspinall before he can be considered a legitimate contender.
While all of this is hypothetical, it’s also worth keeping in mind as we head into the weekend, because things have a way of going sideways when Jones is involved, and even if “Bones” sticks around, the outcome of Saturday’s main event is crucial in determining what comes next in the heavyweight division.
