Rankings Algorithm Update
After tentatively embracing the UFC’s media-formulated rankings (See post below), I can no longer stand to do so. There are just simply too many faults with the UFC’s current system, mainly due to incompetent media members that make up the panel of voting members. After watching Lyoto Machida be dropped out of one panelist’s Top 10 to only be replaced by James Te Huna, that was pretty much the last straw. Therefore, things have returned back to normal here at RankingMMA. My #1 goal with RankingMMA was to provide the best source for everything MMA-ranking related. By continuing to use the UFC’s provided rankings, which are full of biased or uninformed opinions, it is time to separate ourselves from that broken system.
I thank you once again for your continued support of RankingMMA.
Previous Post
So, as many of you know the UFC created their own rankings system a few months back. It is made up of some qualified MMA media members, though there are some panelists that obviously have no clue what they are doing. Regardless of the accuracy of the rankings, the fact is that the UFC, for better or worse, now has official UFC rankings. At first, I disregarded the UFC’s official rankings, but as the weeks have passed, the rankings have started to improve. They are heavily featured on UFC telecasts and it seems as if fighters in general are taking them as a significant means to them reach a title shot. Also, this site’s web traffic suffered a decrease and unfortunately without visitors clicking on ads and supporting this site, I needed to take some type of action in keeping this site afloat. I don’t do this for the money, but I hope to at least pay for this site’s hosting fees with the small revenue brought in by clicked Google ads. Thank you for those that have supported this site over the years.
While taking all of this into consideration, I have decided to replace my site’s rankings with the UFC’s Top 10 rankings and still rank the rest of the division just as I always have. This should help improve the experience for this site’s readers because we hope to still provide the most accurate rankings available.
A few things to note about incorporating the UFC’s rankings into our own:
* For all of our site’s UFC rankings, we still stick to our rankings requirements, which states if a fighter is moving into a new weight class or has yet to officially make their debut in the UFC, they will remain unranked. For example, Chael Sonnen is currently ranked as a MW, but he moved up in weight class, thus we remove him from our MW rankings and he is now unranked at LHW until he fights there. Yes, it’s sort of purgatory for a fighter, but it’s temporary. The same thing is happening with Anthony Pettis’ move down to 145.
The other example is that the UFC has Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza and Luke Rockhold ranked as Top 10 middleweights. I agree that they are Top 10, but they have yet to officially fight in the UFC. Thus, these fighters remain unranked. You will see these fighters ranked though in the MMA World rankings, which disregard what promotion you fight for and simply ranks the Top 25 best fighters in each weight class.
* Another discrepancy you will find with the UFC’s Pound-for-Pound rankings is that they have Frankie Edgar ranked in the Top 10, but he is only ranked 4th in his own weight class. So, why aren’t Chad Mendes and Ricardo Lamas ranked ahead of Frankie in the Pound-for-Pound rankings since they are in the UFC’s featherweight rankings? It’s a good question to ask the panelists that vote on the official UFC rankings. For now though, I am going with what the UFC provides.
* The final small drawback to incorporating the UFC’s rankings into our own is that we cannot update our Top 10 rankings until the UFC has updated theirs. Luckily the UFC does promise to have their rankings updated 36 hours after an event, so it’s not much of a wait, but it won’t be instantaneous like before. We still will be updating all rankings outside of the UFC’s Top 10 as soon as they happen.
Thank you for your continued support of this site, and I hope this small change continues to make you a fan of our MMA rankings.
