A New Era For UFC’s Light Heavyweight Division
What a difficult year it has been for the entertainment industry, with endless cancellations and postponements taking place, for some of the biggest events of the year. Sport was greatly affected, and this included the UFC, which are numerous events cancelled. Many other sports were also affected, with the Olympic games even being moved to 2021. Other sports decided to push their events to later in the year, with others also now taking place. A key example of one is the Melbourne Cup, which is one of the most followed and watched events in the sporting calendar. There are already many Melbourne Cup betting offers for punters, on one of the most eagerly anticipated events of 2020. This includes welcome and bonus offers, on top of tips and guides on the different international races in question. The event going ahead is a positive for sport and continues the return for many others, with the UFC being at the forefront of this, as the first organization to return.
When it comes to the UFC, then there is no doubting that Jon Jones is one of the biggest names in the sport. After nearly a decade and nearly 4,000 days of little movement, there’s finally some movement coming to the light heavyweight division after Jon Jones vacated his title following his plan to move up to heavyweight – since 2011, both Jon Jones and Daniel Cormier have been largely undisputed and although there have been some good challengers nobody has been able to come out on top.
On September 26th, Reyes and Blachowicz will fight for the now vacant title to crown a new champ in a division that is now filled with competition once again, up until now both DC and Jones haven’t had much difficulty in beating even the top contenders until Jones had seen some signs of weakness against Reyes – this will likely mean that Reyes will be the betting favourite for punters after really showing that the decision was a little split with many believing he had in fact won the fight – if you are looking to put a little down on the fight you’ll certainly find some good odds particularly as those at the top are very close together.
It does open up some interesting questions around the division as a whole now – whilst Reyes and Blachowicz are the first two in contention, there are certainly some big fights to be made – when Santos recovers he will certainly be one to be considered as a strong contender following his record in the division and his previous fight with Jones, Anthony Smith has also shown that he is a world class fighter and is also able to hang at the top with the best of them. Volkan Oezdemir had been considered as a strong contender for quite some time but a string of bad performances has seen him fall down the rankings in favor of newer contenders moving from the likes of Rizin in Jiri Prochazka.
It does of course bring into question what may happen now with the former dominant champ Jones – following his recent loss to Stipe Miocic, Cormier has since retired ending one of the longer standing rivalries in the UFC and taking away the opportunity for a heavyweight fight between the two – the first big slated name had been with Francis Ngannou but it seems he is next in line to fight for the title opening up a huge number of opportunities. Whilst Junior Dos Santos has acted as a bit of a gatekeeper in the division for Dana White, he’s on a bit of a losing streak and it may be a bit hit or miss, Alistair Overeem is another great contender for Jones move upwards with a strong striking game and an often forgotten about ground game too – with any luck we’ll get some news around this before the end of the gear and see out 2020 with Jones first heavyweight fight and a newly crowned light heavyweight champ too. It has also been confirmed by Dana too that a strong first showing and the result of the Miocic v Ngannou rematch could slingshot Jon right to the top and in contention of being the baddest man on the planet.
