What's up with the UFC Light Heavyweight Division???

Ok, I am a bit of a stats nerd at times and I was looking at how many fights the UFC has put on and in which weightclasses the fights were.

There will be 179 fights for the first 6 months of this year. This is how the fights have been scheduled per weight class up until the end of June 2012. To add relevance, I will include the number of fighters in each division as listed by the UFC.

Weight Class	No. of Fights	No. of Fighters
Fly	5	11
Bantam	18	36
Feather	32	64
Light	36	72
Welter	35	64
Middle	26	52
Light Heavy	9	35
Heavy	18	31

It is immediately apparent that the LHWs have had the second least number of fights so far this year, and only because the new Flyweight division is in it's infancy.

But when you consider that it takes 2 fighters to make a fight, it is interesting how the numbers pan out.

Four of the divisions (Bantam, Feather, Light, Middle), on average, have had exactly 1 fight per fighter. Two more (Welter and Heavy) have had slightly more than 1 fight per fighter. Flyweight were only lower than the 1:1 ratio because of the size of the division.

That leaves the Light Heavys - their ratio is closer to 0.5:1 meaning only half the LHWs on the UFC roster have fought this year compared to the other divisions.

I know that the number of fighters and fights were inflated by The Ultimate Fighter series this year but the difference seems incredibly large.

So what's up with the Light Heavyweight division?

Is it weak? Is it suffering from Dominant Champion Syndrome? Has there been more injuries among the LHWs than the others? Matchmakers have no idea what matches to make? Are there any big prospects on the horizon?

Are the UFC saving up for an all LHW card? Perhaps the light heavys will be featured in a couple of the next TUFs? What do you fullas reckon?

So every fighter in every weight class has, or will have, fought on average about once (exactly once in the case of bantam, feather, light and middle-weight) in 6 months, except for light heavy where the average is 0.5.

The frequency of matchups is, in my opinion, too low in every weight class.

For reasons as to why it is so especially low at light heavy, Shogun is injured, so is lil nog, Hendo has been in hibernation, Griffin and Franklin have been injured and/or in semi retirement (I think?), Ortiz has been waiting around for Griffin... Bonnar and Machida also haven't fought since last year for whatever reason

Not sure if those account for such a low fights to fighter ratio though.


Also... there are too many fighters.

A smaller number of fighters fighting more frequently would give the divisions a more defined structure, and provide a more compelling title narrative.