Post-Strikeforce: Diaz vs. Cyborg ranking update + Reconsideration: Jorge Santiago

I’ve opted to do something slightly unusual with Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza’s win over Robbie Lawler. Prior to the fight, Souza was the #14 middleweight, with Lawler coming at #11. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t move Souza any higher than #11 with a win. But this got me thinking about the P3Y records of the fighters at #8-10: Paulo Filho, Dan Henderson, and Jorge Santiago.

Filho and Henderson are hanging on by a thread, with none of the wins that got them to their current position left in their P3Y records. Not so for Santiago, whose wins over Kazuo Misaki and Mamed Khalidov are still fresh. So why do I have him below them?

It makes more sense for Filho than for Henderson. Henderson is there not on the strength of his recent middleweight wins, but because he still had his one really strong middleweight win–also against Misaki, as it turns out–in his P3Y record when he returned to 185 lbs. in the UFC. Filho was the man to beat Misaki after Misaki dethroned Henderson in PRIDE, so it makes sense that Filho would be ranked above Santiago even after Santiago beat Misaki himself.

But what about after Santiago avenged his loss against Mamed Khalidov? By then, Filho’s win over Misaki had expired, as had Henderson’s. And Frank Trigg, who was at one time ranked above Santiago for having beaten Misaki first, fell out of the top 15 due to inactivity.

But that wasn’t enough quite yet. At the time he rematched Khalidov, there was still a buffer between the Santiago/Henderson pair and Filho, in the form of both Thales Leites and Alessio Sakara. Santiago couldn’t have leapfrogged them all.

But he should have leapfrogged Henderson, at least. And that would mean that by the time Santiago rematched Misaki this past August, he would have been right below Filho. Having won that fight, Santiago should have gone above Filho then and there.

So now, since I make these things up as I go along, I’m moving Santiago above Henderson and Filho. And with his win over Lawler, Souza’s got a better P3Y record than Henderson and Filho too.

Meanwhile, Lawler is all out of top-15-worthy wins in his P3Y resume, so he drops out of these rankings entirely.

Got all that? Here’s how it looks:

MIDDLEWEIGHT (183-185 lbs.) TOP 15

#	Name	Pro MMA Record	P3Y Record at MW	Notes
1	Anderson Silva	27-4	5-0	UFC middleweight champion (7 defenses)
2	Chael Sonnen	25-11-1	5-2
3	Yushin Okami	26-5	5-1
4	Nate Marquardt	30-9-2	5-2
5	Demian Maia	13-2	7-2
6	Jake Shields	26-4-1	3-0
7	Alessio Sakara	15-7	4-1
8	Jorge Santiago	23-8	7-1 (loss avenged)	Sengoku middleweight champion (2 defenses)
9	Ronaldo Souza	13-2	7-1	Strikeforce middleweight champion (1 defense); moved to #9 following a win over Robbie Lawler on 1/29/11.
10	Paulo Filho	19-2-1	4-1-1
11	Dan Henderson	26-7	2-2
12	Wanderlei Silva	33-10-1	1-0
13	Brian Stann	10-3	2-0
14	Riki Fukuda	17-4-	9-1
15	Mamed Khalidov	21-4-2	3-1-1

Reconsideration / rule change: Brock Lesnar and avenged losses

The recent conundrum over the heavyweight rankings following Fabricio Werdum’s upset victory over former #1 Fedor Emelianenko got me thinking about avenged losses. If you read my post after the event, you saw that I opted to put Werdum at #1 because I couldn’t justify dropping Fedor below former #2 Brock Lesnar. The deciding factor there was that both Fedor and Lesnar had one loss, but Lesnar’s, to a nigh-unranked Frank Mir, was worse.

But as we all know, Lesnar avenged that loss in dramatic fashion. What’s more, he did it after Mir shot up the rankings with a win over perennial upper-top-10 competitor Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira. Shouldn’t that count for something?

Ultimately, I decided that it should. It seems sensible to me that 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. This is the case with Mir and Lesnar. So that’s the new rule.

With the loss to Mir no longer weighing him down, should Lesnar rise from #2 to #1 following Fedor’s loss to Werdum, or should I keep Werdum at #1? It’s a tough call–Lesnar has two top level in the past three years wins to Werdum’s one–over Randy Couture and Frank Mir, plus a solid lower-top-15 win over Heath Herring–but Werdum’s win over Fedor is more prestigious than either of Lesnar’s. But Werdum has that oustanding loss to a then-unranked Junior Dos Santos. I think that gives Lesnar the edge.

So with that, I now have Brock Lesnar at #1, and tomorrow evening’s Lesnar/Carwin UFC title bout is definitely for the #1 spot.

HEAVYWEIGHT (265 lbs. limit) TOP 15

#	Name	Pro MMA Record	P3Y Record at HW	Notes
1	Brock Lesnar	4-1	3-1 (loss avenged)	UFC heavyweight champion (1 defense)
2	Fabricio Werdum	14-4-1	5-1	Moved to #2 following a win over Fedor Emelianenko at Strikeforce: Fedor vs. Werdum on 6/26/10.
3	Fedor Emelianenko	31-2	3-1
4	Shane Carwin	12-0	7-0
5	Cain Velasquez	7-0	5-0
6	Frank Mir	13-5	4-2
7	Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira	32-5-1	3-1
8	Alistair Overeem	33-11	8-1	Strikeforce heavyweight champion (1 defense).
9	Brett Rogers	10-2	5-2
10	Randy Couture	18-10	2-2
11	Junior Dos Santos	11-1	7-1
12	Antonio Silva	14-2	6-1	Moved to #12 following a win over Andrei Arlovski at Strikeforce: Heavy Artillery on 4/15/10.
13	Gabriel Gonzaga	11-5	3-4
14	Cheick Kongo	15-6-1	5-3
15	Andrei Arlovski	15-8	3-3

Reconsiderations: Dan Henderson (again), Anderson Silva, and Kenny Florian

There are three things I’ve changed in my rankings in light of new considerations.

Dan Henderson: I’ve moved Henderson above Chuck Liddell at 205. Liddell’s best win P3Y is Wanderlei Silva, and Henderson beat Silva first, when it meant more. Henderson’s lone 205 loss, to Quinton Jackson, is less damaging than Liddell’s losses.

Anderson Silva: I’ve moved Anderson above Quinton Jackson at 205, to #3. Given that Anderson is undefeated at 205 and beat Forrest Griffin after Jackson lost to him, I’m a little embarrassed I didn’t have it this way before.

Kenny Florian: I’ve moved Kenny Florian below Shinya Aoki, to #3. Before, I didn’t take into account the effect of his loss to BJ Penn. Though Penn’s victory made him the #1 lightweight in the world in my rankings, that was due more to Penn’s being undefeated at lightweight at the time than Penn already being high-ranked. Penn actually didn’t have a great LW resume at that point, at least in terms of rankings (the way I’m doing them).

Reconsideration: Dan Henderson

I originally did not have Dan Henderson in my middleweight top 15, on the grounds that his only wins at that weight in the past three years have been Michael Bisping and Rousimar Palhares, neither of which was a very high-ranked at the time.

In thinking about it recently, probably because Dan’s been in the news, I’ve realized that I failed to take into account what Henderson’s P3Y middleweight record was at the time he returned to MW competition in March of 2008. Though Henderson lost that bout, to Anderson Silva, his P3Y MW record–which included his wins over Ryo Chonan, Akihiro Gono, Murilo Bustamante, and Kazuo Misaki, plus his rematch loss to Misaki–would have come into play for ranking purposes. And given the value of those wins (Misaki in particular) he would have netted himself a higher place than I’m giving him now. And since he has remained active and gone undefeated at MW since then, he should not have dropped very much, if at all.