Heavyweight Prospects

Heavyweight MMA prospects. Everyone's favorite division for fun, impact, and knockouts. The heavyweight division will always be the money and the marquee of combat sports when you have great talent. It seems that the Heavyweight division has been lacking some real luster and excitement out of the top 10 fighters. I feel like there is still a huge gap between the elite and the rest of the pack. Unlike every other division besides light heavyweight, you can look up the rankings and see a top 50 lightweight making a run towards the top ten due to potential, but do you see a top 30 UFC heavyweight doing so? No. So, who are come good prospects currently in MMA that can potentially make waves in the UFC and either chase a title or be in the hunt? 

What is a prospect? I think someone who is a relatively young age, exhibits more potential than peers, has room for improvements, and is active. 

I'm excluding anyone under organizations such as UFC, Bellator, and WSOF, and Rizin. Even though some can still be considered prospects, they are well known already and have been signed to a big organization. 


1.Sergey Pavlovich
Age: 24 Height:6'3 Rec:8-0 Country:Russia
Notable wins:Baga Agaev and Chaban Ka

2.Denis Golstov
Age:26 Height:6'5 Rec:18-4 Country:Russia
Notable wins:Mike Kyle, Paul Buentello, and Brett Rogers

3.Denis Smoldarev

Age:26 Height:6'6 Rec:12-2 Country:Russia
Notable wins:Ante Delija, Kenny Garner, and Maro Perak

4.Amir Aliakbari

Age:28 Height:6'5 Rec:2-0 Country:Iran
Notable wins:N/A

5.Karol Bedorf

Age:32 Height:6'2 Rec:14-2 Country:Poland
Notable wins:Oli Thompson, Peter Graham, James Mcsweeney

6.Michel Batista

Age:32 Height:6'3 Rec:2-0 Country:Cuba
Notable wins:N/A

7.Masoud Ranjbar

Age:27 Height:6'3 Rec:2-0 Country:Iran
Notable wins: N/A

8.Rico Verhoeven 

Age:27 Height:6'5 Rec:1-0 Country:Netherlands
Notable wins:N/A

9.Tai Tuivasa

Age:23 Height:6'4 Rec:4-0 Country: Australia
Notable wins:N/A

10.Ante Delija

Age:25 Height:6'5 Rec:14-3 Country:Croatia
Notable wins:Ricco Rodriguez and Konstantin Gluhov

11.Yosef Ali Mohammad

Age:28 Height:6'7 Rec:6-2 Country:Sweden
Notable wins:Dion Staring

12.Dontale Mayes

Age:24 Height:6'6 Rec:2-0 Country:USA
Notable wins:N/A

13.Evgeny Erokhin

Age:30 Height:6'1 Rec:15-4 Country:Russia
Notable wins:Mike Kyle, Brett Rogers, and Sokoudjou

14.Chi Lewis-Parry

Age:33 Height:6'9 Rec:6-0 Country:England
Notable wins:N/A

15.Darko Stosic

Age:24 Height:6'0 Rec:8-1 Country:Serbia
Notable wins:N/A


16.Michal Wlodarek 

Age:27 Height:6'2 Rec:7-1 Country Poland
Notable wins:Szymon Bajor and Michal Andryszak

17.Salimgerey Rasulov

Age:29 Height:6' Rec:15-6 Country:Russia
Notable wins:Michael Andryszak and Zelimkhan Umiev


18.Arsen Abdulkerimov

Age:29 Height6'3: Rec:8-2 Country:Russia
Notable wins:Levan Razmadze

19.Michal Andryszak

Age:24 Height:6'5 Rec:17-6 Country:Poland
Notable wins:Tim Hague and Baga Agaev

20.Kazbek Saidaliev 

Age: Height:6'3 Rec:7-1 Country:Russia
Notable wins:Tanner Bosser and Goran Reljic

21.Adam Wieczorek 

Age: Height:6'5 Rec:7-1 Country: Poland
Notable wins:Zoumana Cise

22.Zelimkhan Umiev

Age: Height:6'5 Rec:6-1 Country:Russia
Notable wins:N/A


23.Anton Vyazigin 

Age: Height:6'5 Rec:6-1 Country:Russia
Notable wins:Danill Arepyev

24.Jared Vanderaa 

Age:24 Height:6'4 Rec:4-0 Country:USA
Notable wins:N/A

25.Arjan Bhullar

Age:30 Height:6'0 Rec:3-0 Country:Canada
Notable wins:N/A

26.Fernando Rodrigues

Age:29 Height:6'3 Rec:9-2 Country:USA
Notable wins: Yosef Ali Mohammad

27.Brandon Griffin

Age:29 Height:6'3 Rec:4-1 Country:USA
Notable wins: Tyler East

28.Marcelo Golm

Age:23 Height:6'4 Rec:2-0 Country:Brazil
Notable wins:N/A


29.Ricardo Prasel

Age:26 Height:6'7 Rec:7-0 Country:Brazil
Notable wins:N/A

30.Tom Aspinall

Age:21 Height:6'5 Rec:5-2 Country:England
Notable wins:N/A

31.Jeff Hughes

Age:28 Height:6'2 Rec:6-0 Country:USA
Notable wins:John Hawk

32.Junior Albini

Age:25 Height:6'3 Rec:12-2 Country:Brazil
Notable wins: Tiago Cardoso

33.Justin Davenport

Age:31 Height:6'3 Rec:4-0 Country:USA
Notable wines: N/A

34.Sergiu Spivac

Age:21 Height:6'3 Rec:5-0 Country:Ukraine
Notable wines: N/A

35.Tanner Boser

Age:25 Height:6'2 Rec:10-2 Country:Canada
Notable wins: Tim Hague and Tony Lopez


Honorable Mentions:
Alexander Gladkov, Allen Crowder, Andrew Van Zyl, Brendan Battles, Craig Burke, Daniel Moraleida, Daniel Spitz, Daniil Arepyev, Donald Njatah Nya, Dustin Clements, Gleison Silva de Abreu, Grzegorz Janus, Henrique Silva, Ivan Shtyrkov, Jan Jorgensen, Jedrzej Mackowiak, Leandro Xavier, Luc Ngeleka, Luis Santos, Mark Tanios, Martin Merkt, Murod Hanturaev, Nick Barno, Nick Roehrick, Oscar Ivan Costa, Ryan Pokrfky, Sandro Bezzera, Sergey Belostenniy,Shawn Teed, Simon Scott, Tiago Cardoso, Tony Mustard, Wes Anderson, Wessel Mostert, William Hoffman, Wojciech Bulinski, Valdrin Istrefi, Zaur Gadzhibabayev 

Good work man!

Good stuff, man. Hopefully the UFC is reading. 

Nice.  If you want to post anymore prospects, post some in this thread.

I love it, thanks for compiling that!

Good list. It'd be cool to see this done for every weight class.

I did a list for every weight class over at https://skeletonmma.wordpress.com/
recently but mine were smaller. Nice list here.

I'd like to get more in depth with each heavyweight, weaknesses, strengths, and potential. Appreciate community involvement, posting when upcoming fights are happening and new prospects upcoming. I have the time to do every division. I'd like to be reasonable for heavyweight and update it as possible. Hope others will start the same for other divisions. Just want to bring back my community involvement.

Lots of potential there.