Guidelines

Needless to say, my rankings are based on results of fights, not who-would-beat-who judgments. Beyond that, here are the guidelines at work in the rankings on this site.

Inactivity

A fighter will be ineligible for ranking in a weight class after one year without fighting. The year will not be measured to to the day, but rather to the end of the month during which their last fight took place. For example, if a fighter’s last fight was on December 1st, 2009, they would become unranked in that weight class on December 31st, 2010 if they did not compete again the intervening time. This is to avoid a situation like that of Sergei Kharitonov in September 2008, where he would have gone unranked on the 17th despite being scheduled to fight Alistair Overeem only six days later.

A fighter will also become unranked if they suffer life- and/or career-threatening injuries (e.g. Will Ribeiro).

Which fights count?

Fighters will be ranked on the basis of their wins and losses in the past three years (P3Y), rounded to the month (as with the inactivity rule), with recent results weighted more heavily. The P3Y rule is chosen in the interest of transparency, so that the reader knows precisely which fights I’m counting. I also think that three years gives an appropriate snapshot of the state of a fighter’s career, giving due credit for recent wins and demerit for recent losses. Perhaps it will be objected that three years is an arbitrary span. This is true, but it also seems to me that an arbitrary choice of this kind is necessary to remove some of the overarching arbitrariness of rankings in general. This way, I can’t cherry-pick fights from throughout a fighter’s career to justify their position.

I abide by all the official decisions of judges, referees, and athletic commissions, regardless of how terrible they may seem to be. Bad decisions count, bad stoppages count, and even when a commission overturns a Nick Diaz victory because of marijuana use, I will dutifully change the rankings to reflect the no-contest. Wins by submission, knockout, TKO, and any kind of decision are all weighted equally; the ONE exception is fights that quite clearly ended due to freak injury (call it the Coleman-Shogun Rule). Disqualification wins are counted against the loser as though they had lost by any other means, but are not counted in favor of the winner as though they had won by any other means, and only count against the loser for that one fight–that is, they won’t be factored in when determining where the losing fighter moves after subsequent wins or losses.. All this is also done in the interest of transparency.

Fights that do not take place in a particular weight class do not count for ranking purposes. However, if one fighter fails to make a contracted weight (providing it is in one of the categories outlined below), while his opponent succeeds in making the weight, then only the fighter who made the weight will benefit from a win, and only the opponent who failed to make the weight will drop with a loss.

Weight classes

I currently have rankings for seven men’s weight classes: bantamweight (BW), featherweight (FW), lightweight (LW), welterweight (WW), middleweight (MW), light-heavyweight (LHW), and heavyweight (HW). The ranges for these weight classes are denoted in pounds, and were chosen to reflect the official weights of the organizations in which the most relevant fights have been taking place. I make frequent mention of Shooto as an illustrative case of a major organization that uses some weights that might be unfamiliar to Western fans. Some of my choices here are unusual.

HEAVYWEIGHT: 265 lbs. limit

–> Fights where either competitor is over 265 lbs. are considered openweight. This is why Tim Sylvia isn’t in my heavyweight rankings: he hasn’t made 265 lbs. in over a year. (That’s also why you won’t find Ray Mercer.)

LIGHT-HEAVYWEIGHT: 205 lbs. limit

MIDDLEWEIGHT: 183-185 lbs.

–> Fights in Shooto’s “light-heavyweight” division are contested at 183 lbs., as were fights in PRIDE’s “welterweight” division.

WELTERWEIGHT: 168-170 lbs.

–> Fights in Shooto’s “middleweight” division are contested at 168 lbs.

LIGHTWEIGHT: 154-160 lbs.

–>154 lbs. was always Shooto’s “welterweight” class, and is the current lightweight standard in Japan. PRIDE, where the some of the most important lightweight fights took place between 2003 and 2006, used a 160 lbs. upper division, as did the relatively short-lived national promotion EliteXC. For this reason, bouts (including catchweight bouts) up to 160 lbs. will count at lightweight through October 2011, the three-year mark for the last EliteXC event.

FEATHERWEIGHT: 143-145 lbs.

–>Fights in Shooto’s “lightweight” division are contested at 143 lbs.

BANTAMWEIGHT: 132-138 lbs.

–> 132 lbs. is the weight for Shooto’s “featherweight division.” 138 lbs. is the weight for DREAM’s “featherweight” division. Most people seem to rank those fights at FW, but I prefer to rank them at BW due to their proximity to the stateside bantamweight standard of 135 lbs.

CATCHWEIGHTS: Major catchweight bouts are considered on a case-by-case basis. For example, the Jake Shields/Robbie Lawler bout, contested at 182 lbs., counts. Rich Franklin’s fights with Wanderlei Silva and Vitor Belfort at 195 lbs., equidistant as they are from the upper limits of both middlweight and light-heavyweight, do not.

I hope to add more divisions, including women’s divisions, at some point in the future.

Where are they ranked?

A fighter is ranked in whichever weight class(es) they have competed in in the past year. Announced intentions to retire or abandon one weight class for another are irrelevant. They’re there until they haven’t competed for a year as per the inactivity rule.

How competitors move up and down the rankings

I generally follow the “leapfrogging” approach to ranking a winning fighter over a losing one. This is to say that if the #30 fighter beats the #5 fighter, the #30 fighter will necessarily be ranked above the #5. However, the #30 will not simply become the #5. Instead, the #30′s win and the #5′s loss will be independently considered in the context of their wins and losses P3Y to determine their new place. The only hard and fast rule is that the winning fighter must be ranked above the losing one.

How a big upset win or a bad loss will affect a fighter’s ranking is, I’ll admit, a highly subjective judgment involving a number of variables. Generally, a big win for a low-ranked fighter will net them a higher place if they are low-ranked due to inexperience or lack of big wins (c.f. Paulo Thiago, Mackens Semerzier, Gegard Mousasi at light-heavyweight). In fact, if a fighter is debuting in a weight class or is undefeated in that class, they simply take the ranking of whoever they beat. This is because they have no complicating losses, and only losses count against a fighter’s ranking, not lack of wins (generally, lack of wins translates to lack of experience, which itself inhibits a fighter’s ability to score big wins). The loser of the upset will fall farther if their higher ranking was due more to good wins that are past the P3Y mark than recent accomplishments, and will fall less if their best wins were not long ago (c.f. Forrest Griffin after his loss to Anderson Silva). The effect of a good win will be mitigated if the winning fighter has some bad recent losses (c.f. Alessio Sakara, who beat Thales Leites not long after losing to Chris Leben).

A fighter will not move up or down purely on the basis of a good win or bad loss expiring, but each time they fight, the current state of their P3Y record will be taken into account. Fighters may change rank without fighting via the changes in rank of other competitors in their weight class.

Losses to fighters who are unranked due to inactivity

These losses will not affect a fighter’s ranking the same way as a loss to a fighter who is unranked for other reasons, such as debuting in the weight class, or being “virtually” unranked due to lack of good wins and/or preponderance of bad losses. A fighter who is unranked due to inactivity becomes effectively ranked again, on the basis of their P3Y record, the moment they step into the ring for their next fight, and the effect of a loss to such a fighter is weighted accordingly.

Why do it this way? Consider the BJ Penn/Kenny Florian UFC lightweight title match. Penn, the champion, was unranked at lightweight due to inactivity during his quixotic attempt to upset Georges St. Pierre at welterweight. He then returned and defended his title against Florian. But it would seem wrong, in this case, to weigh this loss as if Penn had never fought at lightweight before, when in reality he was undefeated in his most recent stint in the class. Therefore, Penn is considered to have become ranked again upon setting foot in the cage.

The inactivity rule didn’t wind up affecting Penn’s status at lightweight much (particularly since he beat Florian). But Wanderlei Silva, for example, would have to score a very big win in a comeback fight gain a position anywhere near his former one at light-heavyweight.

Draws

A draw does not directly affect the rankings of the fighters involved. They simply stay where they are. However, if Fighter A draws with lower-ranked Fighter B, and Fighter C (also ranked lower than Fighter A) then defeats Fighter B, Fighter C then becomes ranked above both Fighter B and Fighter A. Think of it this way: if A=B (they drew), and C > B, then C > A. The only way for Fighter A to avoid this is to fight and beat someone ranked higher than Fighter C in the interim.

Consider the case of Damacio Page’s win over Marcos Galvao at bantamweight. Galvao’s last fight before Page was a draw with Shooto champ Masakatsu Ueda. Because Ueda did not fight and beat someone higher ranked than Page prior to Page beating Galvao, Page became ranked above both Galvao and Ueda.

I feel that this policy accurately reflects the nature of a draw: better than a loss, but not an outcome to be sought. This rule will not apply to fights in organizations like ZST, where any fight that goes the distance is ruled a draw. (It will be very interesting to see if I ever have reason to take ZST fights into account.)

Avenged losses

If Fighter A loses to Fighter B, but later beats Fighter B at a time when Fighter B is ranked as high or higher than he was at the time of their first bout, then the original loss should not longer count against Fighter A for ranking purposes. The loss will still be noted in the P3Y column, but there will be a note stating that it is avenged (or if there are multiple losses, that one or more has been avenged).