Former UFC heavyweight champion Andrei Arlovski has returned to the UFC but what should fans expect when he steps back into the octagon later this year?
Andrei Arlovski, the former heavyweight champion of the UFC, has finally returned.
UFC president Dana White tweeted his return last week, bringing the 35-year-old back into the fold of the promotion’s heavyweight division.
It’s been six years since the Belarusian native set foot in the octagon and returns to the UFC a winner of six of his last eight fights.
“The Pitbull” has spent time jumping around various promotions such as Affliction, Strikeforce, ONE FC and most recently the World Series of Fighting.
He already has his return match booked, when he faces TUF veteran Brendan Schaub (10-3) at UFC 174 in June but what does this return mean exactly for the UFC?
The UFC’s heavyweight division is perhaps the shallowest in the promotion right now, with most of its fighters over the age of 30 and few true contenders left for Cain Velasquez.
Every time an upstart such as Stipe Miosic, Travis Browne, Stevan Struve or, perhaps to a certain extent, Alistair Overeerm, gain any steam in the division someone sends them back down the ladder.
Browne is perhaps the division’s best up-and-coming talent at the moment but he sits at age 31 and just lost a No. 1 contender bout to Fabricio Werdum two weeks ago.
Bringing in Arlovski helps breathe a little bit of depth into the division.
At age 35 he hardly helps the division’s youth problem and with a 21-10 record he’s barely passing as a possible contender.
Nonetheless, Arlovski is an exciting fighter, for both the right and wrong reasons, and the UFC relishes this.
On the one end, if you’re pulling for Arlovski, the man has 15 career knockouts with some of his victims including Roy Nelson, Ben Rothwell and Vladimir Matyushenko.
And of course the flip side to that is of his 10 career losses he’s been KO’ed or TKO’ed seven times.
His reputation as a glass jaw is not a great thing to have in the division that punches the hardest.
It’s still easy to see why the UFC resigned him and a fight against Schaub makes sense.
Schaub has a similar penchant for giving the knockouts and taking them as well and the fight will likely end with one of them face-planting inside the octagon.
Ideally for the UFC, it’s Schaub that tastes the canvas and Arlovski who walks away the winner that hopefully begins a contender run in heavyweight division.
It’s highly unlikely that this will happen.
The heavyweight division may be shallow but its top five are all far and away better fighters than Arlovski.
I don’t see “The Pitbull” getting past the division’s elite such as Junior Dos Santos, Werdum, Browne or even Mark Hunt for that matter.
Arlovski in the end is a nostalgia signing for the UFC and it helps keep the division interesting.
It would be nice to see “The Pitbull” go on a tear like he did in his older days but simply put the best of the division are still simply better than everyone else at the moment.
Still it’s nice to see an old fan favorite return home.
Welcome back, Mr. Arlovski.
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