A glance at the lightweight rankings on this site will reveal that I have a different take on the division than most. I hope that this post will go some way in explaining why.
The lightweight division is notoriously difficult to rank. This is usually attributed to the lack of overlap between its two main sites of competition: Japan (particularly Shooto, DREAM, Sengoku, and formerly PRIDE) and the United States (mainly the UFC). Some have advocated scrapping a composite ranking altogether and simply keeping separate lists.
And it ‘s true: there has yet to be a match between a top Japanese and American lightweight star in their respective primes. Some cite the B.J. Penn/Takanori Gomi fight from October of 2003, but it often goes unmentioned that this took place before Gomi’s star-making run in PRIDE and directly after a Shooto loss to Joachim Hansen. The picture is complicated further by the fact that between 2003 and 2006, after the UFC scrapped its lightweight class, Japan was the place to be for lightweight competition. This produced a Japan-centricity in the rankings that continues to be felt today, much to the chagrin of those who feel that the UFC lightweights are at least as good as, if not outright superior to, their Japan-based counterparts.
Obviously, I don’t favor a separate-lists approach. I wish I could say that my rankings were based on a detailed reconstruction of lightweight division history going back to 1999 or so. To be honest, I tried that, and found it too daunting. Instead, what I’ve done is identify a couple of significant points of overlap–make no mistake, there is overlap, even if it’s not exactly the kind we want–and created a few separate hierarchies out of which I produced a somewhat rough composite ranking. It’s far from perfect, but I think it’s a fairly sensible one.
Consider this: in April of 2006, #1 lightweight Takanori Gomi was upset by Brazilian dark horse Marcus Aurelio. Aurelio subsequently lost to Japanese standout Mitsuhiro Ishida and in a rematch to Gomi, but when you beat the #1 fighter in your weight class, you tend to retain a high ranking. Aurelio’s next fight after Gomi was a UFC loss to Clay Guida. Aurelio picked up a couple more wins before losing again to Tyson Griffin. From these and subsequent fights, we get these hierarchies: Penn > Florian > Maynard > Huerta > Sanchez > Guida, and Maynard > Edgar > Sherk > Griffin. (Aurelio has slid into relative obscurity by now.)
Mitsuhiro Ishida’s next loss, meanwhile, was to perennial lightweight factor Caol Uno in PRIDE successor organization DREAM. Caol Uno’s next fight was a loss to Spencer Fisher in, you guessed it, the UFC. From this, we get Stevenson > Fisher > Uno > Ishida. Now we have a genuine win-based (rather than subjective appearance-based) justification for ranking UFC fighters in and around the top 15.
Meanwhile, in Japan, former divisional kingpin Gomi falls off hard with a controversial decision loss to very-low-ranked Sergey Golyaev, and a submission loss to Satoru Kitaoka. These and subsequent fights gives us Mitsuoka > Golaev > Hirota > Kitaoka > Gomi.
Ishida’s Shooto loss to Mizuto Hirota and Strikeforce loss to Gilbert Melendez gives us Hirota > Melendez > Ishida.
Finally, there are the fighters keeping the top of the Japanese lightweight rankings warm in Gomi’s absence, both his contemporaries/former opponents and those (like Shinya Aoki and Eddie Alvarez) who emerged at the end of PRIDE and beginning of DREAM: Aoki > Alvarez > Kawajiri > Hansen > Cavalcante.
In creating my lightweight rankings, I constructed an approximate hierarchy-of-hierarchies based on when the relevant wins took place, and ran them all together to produce a top 25, the top 15 of which now appears in the current rankings. The results are sometimes conventional, sometimes not: for example, I have Roger Huerta far higher than most, on the grounds that he was the first to beat Guida after Guida beat Aurelio (and was undefeated at the time). Interestingly, Huerta’s high ranking and Shinya Aoki’s ill-timed loss to Joachim Hansen ultimately provide the basis for my thoroughly conventional placement of B.J. Penn at #1.
Hopefully this sheds some light on my particular approach to the conundrum that is the lightweight division. It’s all a bit convoluted a certainly far from perfect, but I don’t think anyone else attempting this task can claim anything better.
Ranking MMA 