March provides sports fans an opportunity to get off their most absurd picks and wildest takes, but usually, those predictions revolve around the men’s and women’s NCAA basketball tournaments.
No such tournament exists for MMA, but that hasn’t stopped us from creating our own hypothetical tournaments for the past few years. With the return to action of former UFC and PFL heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou on May 16 and the announcement that former UFC middleweight and light heavyweight champ Alex Pereira will move up to MMA’s premier weight class on June 14, the big fellas will take center stage in this year’s bracket. Ngannou will take on Philipe Lins on the upcoming MVP MMA fight card, while Pereira will square off with Ciryl Gane for the interim UFC heavyweight belt at the White House.
To determine the seeding, ESPN’s resident MMA divisional ranker, Brett Okamoto, sorted through the top heavyweights across the sport. Afterward, the fighters were pitted against each other in a head-to-head tournament to determine who would hypothetically earn the right to cut down the net as our heavyweight winner.
Okamoto, Andreas Hale and Jeff Wagenheim explain how they believe each fight would play out.
MMA heavyweight Sweet 16 bracket
| Fighter | Fighter | |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Tom Aspinall | vs. | 16. Gable Steveson |
| 8. Alex Pereira | vs. | 9. Vadim Nemkov |
| 4. Sergei Pavlovich | vs. | 13. Ante Delija |
| 5. Waldo Cortes-Acosta | vs. | 12. Derrick Lewis |
| 2. Alexander Volkov | vs. | 15. Valter Walker |
| 7. Curtis Blaydes | vs. | 10. Serghei Spivac |
| 3. Ciryl Gane | vs. | 14. Renan Ferreira |
| 6. Francis Ngannou |
I would take all of the left side of the bracket. Maybe but Poatan.
Depends on match ups. If fighters are seeded then the top fighters might go further. Alex might merc a couple of guys fast so he will be fresh.
The matchups are in the pic
Fran is old. He can merc guys fast but he sometimes struggles and might has after one hard fight.
I get a dead link. Still it depends on matchups. I think seeding the fighters is fair. If there was a good lay and pray fighter he might be a dark horse
Guys , check ORIGINAL Article ^ Too Much To Copy and Paste this time
Jon Jones. I know he’s not in the fantasy tournament, but I think he beats them all. Maybe prime Francis can beat Jones. Maybe Tom Aspinall.
I’m guessing he didn’t say if it would be a one night tournament or not? That would change things drastically
thats true
If I’m reading the brackets right, it likely comes down to Gane vs. Aspinall or Pereira (depending on who you think wins Aspinall vs. Pereira in round 2). I like Gane vs. either.
More realistically it would come down to Pereira vs. Waldo as the only two capable of being active enough to make it through a tournament.
Blaydes
Shit with these options taking Ngannou.
I think Steveson fucks them all up.
Was just wondering how Stevenson would fair against Aspinall. That is not a great match up for Tom.
I legit don’t see any of them stopping his initial takedown. Tom better have a Werdum level guard.