Guy has the heart of a champion time to get some training to back that up!

Guida by t-bag submission second round.

Is it also possible that the LW’s suffer from a similiar situation as the HW’s, in that the best all-around athletes in a given weight range, such as the HW’s and football, are engaging in other athletic pursuits, like boxing, more traditional to their size?
Maybe the break-out LW we’re all looking for, who ideally would have quality stand-up, take-downs, cardio,and submissions is boxing in some city gym or training at a South Florida tennis camp? Could the LW of tomorrow [who we need today] be running track somewhere?
From what I understand most LW’s walk-around weight is maybe 170? At 170 you have athletes pursuing track, boxing, tennis, basketball, la crosse, even hockey and on occasion baseball. That doesn’t even include swimming, diving, winter sports, extreme sports, and so on.
How the Hell can the sport of MMA get a 170 pound shortstop off of the baseball diamond, or even a 165 pound platform diver or swimmer out of the pool and into the Octagon to compete at 155?

Also, in terms of MMA, is it possible wrestlers dominate certain weight classes because statistically you’d probably find a larger number of competitive athletes at that weight class that essentailly have nowhere to go after college, save coaching? I know there are the World and Pan Am games, AAU, various submission wrestling pursuits [ADCC, NAGA], and of course the Olympics, but for most wrestlers life after college is a search to make a living while trying to deal with the still-burning desire to compete.

I’m not saying its necessarily a good or bad thing, I’m just saying it seems to me that a LOT of these guys wind up at 155, like Jazzkok points out, and not always for the betterment of the division. Maybe, just maybe if more tae kwon do, aikido, judo, and karate schools pushed MMA, particularly for their smaller athletes, the wrestler hammerlock [sorry, bad joke] on the LW division would be broken…

Good question dude. Well my opinion is that right now there are way too many one dimensional wrestlers who are trying to improve their overall game. I think that’s the reason no one fighter stands out(besides florian).

Maynard,Edgar,Sherk,guida, these are all “top” lw’s @ the moment and what do they all have in common? Ding ding ding, wrestling! Other than that, what else stands out about these dudes? Maynard and edgar have decent stand up but when was the last time we saw a sub or ko from them? And these are the dudes who everyone thinks are @ the top. They all sort of cancel eachother out because they are going out there to do the same thing. UNtil we see someone who can do it all like florian and of course “the prodigy”, the lw division will stay as it is…blah.

But, like you pointed out, i feel that if BJ Penn keeps himself in shape and stays concentrated, i honeslty feel that he can hold the title for a very long time. Now i’m not the biggest Penn fan,but to be quite honest, he’s a complete fighter who take out anyone at 155, BUT he does tend to slack off in training and has a reputation to not have good cardio which has cost him in the past and can certainly cost him his title in the future.