http://sports.espn.go.com/broadband/video/videopage?categoryId=2881270&brand=null&videoId=3700478&n8pe6c=1

21:40

The trend of the UFC letting top heavyweights go has probably been because they cost an arm and a leg if we take the disclosed salaries at face value. Werdum made $80,000 in the loss against Arlovski, his salary for his four UFC fights has most likely been over $480K. Of course, Cro Cop made over a million for his three fights, Sylvia, Arlovski and Vera all made/make $100K to lose a fight and Gonzaga makes at least $50K just for showing up. Even Eddie Sanchez nearly made $50K at UFC 79 last year. Affliction and EliteXC have been even worse in paying their heavyweights big dollars. For a division where, outside of Couture and Lesnar, nobody has drawn in the US that’s a lot of money to toss around.

In comparison, Houston Alexander made less than $15,000 against Eric Schafer.

Also, how exactly do we know that he didn’t take the fight seriously? He came in heavier than he usually is, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that he wasn’t taking the fight seriously. It could have just have easily been that a training injury caused him to be able to train less, and that caused him to put on some weight. That happens all the time to fighters, and in the weight classes that require cutting, it can make for some very hard weight cutting (ie, Thiago Alves with his injured ankle before the Matt Hughes fight). In heavyweight fights, you don’t have to cut weight at all unless you’re Brock Lesnar, but a training injury could still cause you to come in heavier than usual. Again, I’m not saying that he DID have a training injury, I’m just saying that it has to be considered just as likely or more likely than simply not taking the fight seriously.

“I’m surprised with this news. My sister is my manager and shes the one that deal with the UFC and she always contact me first before every decision is made and from what I know UFC didn’t contacted her. I still have 4 more fights left on my contract until 2010. From what they told me I should fight in february, july, november and april of 2010. In fact, I’m moving to the USA because I’ll prepare for those fights in the UFC with Rafael Cordeiro.” said Werdum that is finishing all the details to move to USA in december…”

Notice how MMA Weekly is really the only major MMA Website to have reported this so far. Dave Meltzer had a tiny blurb on his website. Besides that, journalists are staying silent. Makes me wonder if MMA Weekly should have waited until they got all the facts before going public with it.

Sucks that Werdum was released but the major is problem is that Werdum simply didn’t sell PPVs. That’s why Houston Alexander and the other skill-less brawlers are still around and Werdum is not. I blame the redneck fans.

With that said, it is still their worst division. And personally for me, the Heavyweight Division can be the most boring division in the sport as well.