Josh Thomson: Heavier Weight Classes All Have Weaknesses, Lightweight & Below Are The Best

josh thomson

Former Strikeforce lightweight champion Josh Thomson made a big comeback to the UFC in 2013 with a massive TKO win over Nate Diaz at UFC on Fox 7. The victory confirmed that ‘Punk’ could hang at the top level, and set him up with a UFC on Fox 10 bout with former champion Ben Henderson.

Unfortunately for Thomson, the fight didn’t go his way, and he lost a decision to ‘Smooth’ this past January. Now scheduled to face Bobby Green, in replacement of Michael Johnson at UFC on Fox 12, ‘Punk’ could well find himself back in contention with a win. Talking with Fox Sports, Thomson discussed the bigger weight classes in the UFC:

“This is what I say — when you go up in weight, you should be saying it to those guys. Because those guys all have weaknesses. You hit 185, 205, and heavyweight, those guys are always just good at like one thing, two things, but they’re not great all the way around. There’s ways to finish them. So if you’re a well-rounded athlete, you can finish those guys. You can find ways to finish those guys,”

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“You start getting in the 185’s, 205, heavyweight, they start being one-dimensional, two-dimensional fighters. They’re not mixed martial artists. They’re not as good as the 55-pounders and below,” Thomson said. “They’re just not. To me that’s just a fact.”

I’d have to say that I disagree with Thomson, but also side with him on some points. Without a doubt there is a lot of technique in the bantamweight, flyweight, featherweight and lightweight divisions, but you can hardly call guys like Cain Velasquez and Jon Jones one-dimensional.

“With 55-pounders and below, good luck, man. Everybody’s good all around — they’re good wrestlers, they’re good jiu-jitsu guys, they’re good standup guys, they’re game to throw down and they’re always in shape. 170 is kind of like the limbo — like there’s some well-rounded guys in there. GSP was the champion so long because he was the most well-rounded and usually in the best shape. But that’s kind of like the whole new guy — that’s why Rory MacDonald does well. He’s in shape, he’s got pretty good jiu-jitsu, he’s hard to take down but he’s got good standup. He’s well-rounded with good shape. Those are the guys that are hard to beat.”

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It is undoubtedly harder to focus on technique in the heavyweight division, in comparison to flyweight or bantamweight when one clean shot can knock you out cold. But this sport is in a stage of transition. Huge guys like Junior dos Santos are adding spinning kicks to their arsenal, and flyweights like Jo Benavidez and Demetrious Johnson have shown that they can score big knockouts.

Do you agree that fighters in the heavier weight classes are just that, and that the lower weight classes are where the real martial artists are?