Days before the back-to-back Bellator MMA bonanza went down, Matt Matrione said that if the heavyweight grand prix final ended up being between Ryan Bader and Chael Sonnen — neither of whom competed at heavyweight a single time before this tournament — it would discredit the promotion’s heavyweight division. Sonnen had some choice thoughts on the state of the heavyweights:
“Yeah, I think that’s right. I think it discredits all the heavyweights completely. The best thing to do with heavyweights is to keep them the hell away from any other weight class. They’re the worst athletes in the room, they’re the slowest guys in the room, they’re the laziest guys in the room, which is why they weigh so goddamn much, and if you want to keep the mystique going on to the public that size matters and the big guys are better just because they’re bigger, if you want to keep that false narrative out there, keep us real athletes away from the heavyweights. I think it was a risky move. They tried it on the other side of the tracks, and a light heavyweight now has that strap, too. Heavyweights suck. Mitrione is right.”
Let’s investigate the veracity of that statement, as much as it’s possible to objectively assess whether or not something “sucks…”