Disclaimer

My goal with this series of rants is to look at current MMA rankings in more detail. It is also an attempt to help people better understand the MMA ranking system used on this site. It would be nice if out of all of this more people understood the distinction between the MMA ranking system used on the site and the actual MMA rankings that we see. Keep in mind that matchmaking, judging, refereeing and commissions all play a role in the final MMA rankings that we see. If something looks “off” it’s not necessarily because of the system.

GSP

I would hope most don’t have a problem with GSP being #1 on the welterweight list. He’s almost universally considered one of the three best pound for pound fighters on the planet. In fact, I’m really only putting this section here because it’d be silly to talk welterweights and not mention him. Having said that…well there really isn’t much else to say.

Perhaps the only thing to note is that GSP has spoken about training for the Olympics. His recent fight activity has been a bit lower with only two fights in each of the last two years. Overall though his record and his rating are incredible. If GSP doesn’t fight very much or happens to suffer a loss and then focuses on the Olympics his ranking might drop. This isn’t an insult to him and I trust he would climb right back up the list *IF* he even drops in the first place.

Jake Shields

Possibly the most controversial ranking currently at welterweight is that of Jake Shields. Lots of MMA fans haven’t seen him fight and some that have didn’t enjoy the fights very much. Given that opinions are like assholes (meaning I don’t want to hear other peoples’…or however the saying goes) I’m going to focus on the facts.

Shields has now won 13 straight fights. Some of the people he’s beaten on that streak are:

Mayhem Miller
Robbie Lawler
Paul Daley
Nick Thompson
Carlos Condit
Yushin Okami

One thing that stands out from the above list is that half of the fighters are “middleweights”. This leads to some discussion of where Jake should be ranked at middleweight and how it might affect his welterweight ranking. Overall it seems as though welterweight is the best class for Jake, and since a majority of his recent fights have been at that weight he remains there. If Jake chooses to stay at middleweight though, then he will be removed from the welterweight list.

Regardless of the weight Jake chooses to fight at I think it’s a bit sad that he doesn’t seem to get as much positive attention as he should. I know some people find his fights to be boring at times, but I didn’t see anyone holding up “Wall”-”n”-”Stall” signs for Randy at UFC 105 and he’s still pretty loved. Remember that prior to the Miller fight Shields had ended 8 fights in a row via (t)KO/Submission.

My goal here isn’t to get people to “like” Jake Shields as much as it is to get them to acknowledge what he’s done. You don’t have to enjoy watching him or like him on any level, but at least be able to accurately discuss what he’s accomplished thus far in his career. Too often it seems a fighter being “liked” is grounds for being bumped up a few spots on the ranking lists.

Jon Fitch

Speaking of fighters that have done well, but some find boring…Heeeeerreeeeeeeeeeeeesssssssssssss Jon! You have to go back over two years to find the last time Jon didn’t go to decision. Some might not find that very impressive, but they probably didn’t see the GSP fight. I honestly have no idea how this guy made it to decision. He’s continually shown a willingness to keep going and I think that has slowly earned him more and more fans.

Prior to that loss to GSP Fitch had won 15 in a row, and since he’s had two solid wins against Gono and Thiago. The potential problem I see coming is who he’s being matched up against. From what I’ve heard his next fight is to be against Mike Pierce. I think Pierce is an interesting prospect, but Fitch is almost universally ranked between #2 and #4 at welterweight. Why he is being given an unranked 10-2 fighter is beyond me. Perhaps it’s just one more easy fight before a rematch against GSP, or maybe there’s more to it.

What I do have to point out though is that by having an “easier” fight it does open the door for others to pass him, even if just temporarily. We’ll have to see how the fight goes and who other fighters beat in the coming months. For me though, the risk vs reward for Fitch just feels off in this fight and I hope his next opponent is much higher ranked.

Dan Hardy

Speaking of moving up the ranks, here’s Dan Hardy. A win over Swick and he finds himself sitting at #4 currently in the welterweight rankings.

Time for a quick tangent to talk about Thiago Alves (sorry Hardy). Alves was sitting around #2 or #3 on most welterweight ranking lists for awhile. Thus far in 2009 he has just 1 fight and it is a loss. This is a case that shows the fluidity of the rankings on this site. We didn’t drop Alves off the list for a single loss. We didn’t do any wild leapfrogging with a 1-0 fighter. Rather, Hardy got hot and won a couple good matches recently and at the same time Alves suffered a loss and went inactive.

I point this situation out because it seems like at times people look at the rankings and assume they’ve been chiseled in stone for years and will never change. That is actually about as far away from the truth as you can get. If Alves were to compete at UFC 106 and score a solid win, they would hop back ahead of Hardy. When looking at the rankings on this site, please always keep in mind the timing of things. A fighter is going to be a bit lower following a loss. At the same time, a fighter on a winning streak will be higher.

One other thing we can see from the Hardy’s current ranking is that it’s reasonable for him to get the title shot. I know some blast the mma-elo system because they think #2 always has to fight #1 and that we’ll never see certain fights and blahblahblah. That, again, is simply untrue. What the system promotes is reasonable fights, competitive fights, respectful fights. That doesn’t mean the #2 guy has to always get the title shot or that a fighter should keep getting rematches against Anderson Silva until the Spider takes 400 rating from them.

In this case we see Shields at #2 (not in the UFC), we see Fitch (recent title shot, loss) at #3 and Hardy at #4. I think giving Hardy the title shot makes perfect sense in this case. It would be nice if he’d had just one more win to get his rating up a bit higher prior to the GSP fight. When making matches for fighters like GSP/Anderson/Fedor though it’s hard at times and this is certainly acceptable.

I didn’t really say much about Hardy in this section, so I’ll just point out that he’s currently on a seven fight win streak and that is the longest of his career. If GSP beats Hardy that would push his current win streak to seven, which would tie the longest of his career.

Diego Sanchez

Diego is currently still showing at welterweight despite his last two fights being at lightweight. Following his fight against BJ Penn (in December *crosses fingers*) Diego will be moved to the lightweight rankings.

Matt Hughes

Hughes currently sits at #7 on our current list of MMA weltweights. Some people feel this is too high, and some think Hughes should retire. The thing I find interesting is who Hughes has lost to recently. He lost to GSP (just like everyone else, but at least he still has one win against him), he lost to Alves (#2-#4 ranked welterweight) and five years ago he lost to BJ Penn. That’s it, those are Hughes “recent” losses.

Matt is obviously getting older and I know some think the sport has passed him by. What I always find amusing though is how some people perceive losing to someone great as somehow meaning you suck. Look, if I go into a double elimination tennis tourney and pull Nadal and Federer as my first two opponents, I’m going to lose badly. That doesn’t mean I’m horrible (I am, but ignore that for now), it doesn’t mean I’m not top 10 (I’m not), it just means I lost to some really great people. Technically speaking I could be the third best tennis player in the world (still not), but I happened to face those couple people that are just better than me.

The situation I speak of with Matt certainly isn’t unique to him either. It seems to have become common place for a fighter to lose and then be dubbed “a can” or some other storage container. The logical part of my brain (the whole thing) at that point beings to hurt. You see, if someone is a “can” and someone else beat them…how the hell is that an accomplishment!?. Seriously, here we have Fighter A…they just defeated Fighter B…we now call Fighter B a can. If Fighter B isn’t any good then why the hell is everyone drinking Fighter A flavored kool-aid all of a sudden?!?

In the situation above I’m not saying Fighter A isn’t good, I’m not even saying Fighter B doesn’t suck, I’m just trying to point out the reasonable level of confusion some might have. If I walk up to a girl at a bar wearing my “Yes, I’m Evil Pooh” T-shirt and she shoots me down and my response is “she was ugly”, doesn’t that mean I just got shot down by an ugly chick?

How does that help my case!? Wouldn’t it be better if I went, “damn, that girl was WAYYYY out of my league, an 11, three time Miss-Redheadtopia”. In much the same vein, wouldn’t it behoove people to *PRAISE* the fighter that just lost. Something like “Wow, Fighter B is amazing, still has it, only lost to top guys and I think this helps show that Fighter A really is one of the top guys now”. Again, I’m throwing together fortune cookie scraps here, but I hope you get the idea.

Hughes’ activity (bet you didn’t think I remembered who I was talking about) has gone down considerably in recent years. With only one fight in 2009 and a single fight back in 2008 you have to wonder how many more fights he’ll have. Overall though I don’t think his losses to top 3 guys in the division are proof of his demise and I think there are a lot of newer fighters working their way up that Hughes would still give a challenge to.

Paulo Thiago

Since I’m ranting about things that don’t make sense to me, I’m now going to jump down to Paulo Thiago. Currently on the site he’s ranked #24. This is a pretty big contrast to some sites that have him ranked as high at #5 (last I checked).

Where things get interesting is when we look at this next fight. He is currently scheduled to face Jakob Volkmann at UFC 106. Volkmann is an interesting up and comer with a 9-0 record and only a couple of decision. Having said that, why the hell is the “#5 welterweight” facing a 9-0 prospect? If Thiago really is “top 5″ then this fight is horrible, it makes no sense, and people should vehemently object.

If we consider another possibility though…What if Thiago really is just a top 20(ish) level fighter right now? Looking at his record we see he is 11-1. That’s a pretty good record. Where things get interesting is looking at his progression. Here on this site his progression has been steady over the past couple of years as he pieced together a solid 11 fight win streak. On other ranking lists he basically never got mentioned until he beat Josh Koscheck. As soon as he did that on other lists he immediately shot into the top 10.

Following that win, Thiago took on Fitch (see above) and lost the first fight of his career. On mma-elo he’s got a solid rating and is still working his way up the list. On other sites he’s sitting very high and I honestly can’t fathom how killing Jacob Volkmann with mind bullets 0.1 seconds into the fight would possibly help his ranking.

This really seems like a case where a fighter had a big win and then an almost expected loss. I don’t think Paulo’s current ranking on the site is insulting to him and I think it’d be quite easy for him to move back up the list. Beating Volkmann would be a solid win and after that he would hopefully be given a step up in competition again.

Other Possible Matchups

Much like I did with the lightweights the other day these are just a few random matchups that seem to make sense from a ranking point of view and might yield interesting (and meaningful) results.

Fitch Vs Alves 2

This seems like a solid rematch. The first time they fought was almost three and a half years ago. Both have lost to GSP, both have beaten Hironaka.

Rumble Vs Paulo Thiago

We spoke about where Paulo really “fits” in the current welterweight rankings and I think this fight would be interesting. Rumble is a fighter on his way up and I think both fighters stand to gain from this fight.

The Heat Vs Semtex

Karo seems to be floating out in the ranking abyss somewhere. He almost got a title shot, had some issues, and things have just been “off” ever since. With Karo’s last fight ruled a no contest and a slew of decisions prior to that Karo really needs to get some momentum going.

In a very different situation is Paul Daley. Daley has won four straight since losing to “The Goat”. He just won his UFC debut against Kampmann and his style is sure keep UFC fans interested. His upcoming fight against Condit should be entertaining and maybe “heat vs semtex” could follow?

Shields Vs ???

None of these are likely to happen, but I think some matches that would shed some light on the welterweight rankings would be…

Shields Vs Hughes
Shields Vs Karo
Shields Vs Fitch

Most of those might not turn out to be the most entertaining fights for some people, but I think they’d help clear up the welterweight picture quite a bit. A slightly more likely, and also beefier fight might be Shields Vs Dan Henderson at 185.

Is there no one else?

As with yesterday’s rant, please let me know anyone I left out. If there are any fighters that still seem out of place or that you would like a more detailed explanation of, please don’t hesitate to ask. One of the biggest benefits of the ranking system used is that everything is clear, fair and consistent. I’ll try to get middleweights done by Thursday, so if you have specific questions, please get them in now.

-Evil Pooh

A majority of the complaints I get regarding this site tend to boil down to “Fighter A is too high”. Usually I respond to this by simply stating that if someone would beat them they’d go lower. However, I often understand where the person commenting is coming from. I’ve contended for awhile that if I could just make a fight or two here and there it’d help “clean up” a lot of the data. With that in mind I thought I’d start up a new little segment called, “Monday MatchMaker”. (insert corny it’s mmm mmm good blurb here)

Matt Hughes Vs. Jake Shields

I’ll start right out by saying this isn’t the fight I planned to mention today. However, with the result from this weekend’s Strikeforce card (Is the spoiler alert supposed to go before or after you give away information? *shrugs*) the fight became even more interesting in my opinion.

Shields

Shields is a fighter that has been on a tear for awhile now, but seems to get no respect. People constantly think he’s rated too high, but he just keeps winning. A solid win over a fighter like Matt Hughes would likely make more people finally take notice.

Hughes

Hughes is an all-time great who’s career is starting to wind down. I personally felt that professionally he should have retired several years ago because there simply was nothing left for him to do. There is no doubt that Hughes has the hunger to continue competing though and the chance to avenge the recent loss of a training partner is an extra little incentive. (Spoiler alert? Bleh, I’ll work on it)

The Fight

I know some fans will be weary of a fight that has very little chance of a standing KO finish, but this match could be explosive. Hughes’ BJJ continues to be underrated, and Shields is more tenacious/explosive than many realize. Since both fighters excel in the same areas it would be interesting to see who was able to impose their will on the other.

The fight also balances out nicely is that whichever fighter won, would be ranked higher (on this site, and likely others). This means both have something to gain, and both have something to lose (a topic I’ll discuss more in the coming weeks).

Fighter Comparison – Matt Hughes Vs. Jake Shields

Brock Larson Vs. Josh Koscheck

Since the above match isn’t very likely due to the organizational differences between the fighters, I figured I’d throw in an extra matchup. This is another welterweight showdown, but in this case both fighters are currently in the UFC.

Brock Larson

Similar to Shields mentioned above Brock is a fighter that some think is “too high”. Again though, he continues to win. One of the obvious knocks on Brock is that he hasn’t faced very difficult competition. Looking at:

MMA ELO – Current Welterweight Rankings

we see that although Brock is ranked quite high currently his Strength of Schedule is the fourth *lowest* of the fighters in the top 25. (Evil Tip – You can sort the rankings pages by the various columns by clicking on the column heading, in this case “strength of schedule”).

Taking on a tested fighter like Koscheck would show whether Brock is ready to hang at the upper levels of the welterweight division.

Josh Koscheck

Josh is a fighter that needs to get back on a roll. After winning five in a row (including giving Diego Sanchez his first ever loss) Kos lost a decision to GSP (big understatement). He came back from the loss to win two in a row, but then lost another decision to Thiago Alves. Following another win was…you guessed it, another loss.

Kos needs to get back on the right track and a solid win over an experienced fighter would be a great start.

The Fight

I have to confess that I haven’t a clue where this fight would go. Truth be told I think these two could fight 5 times and have 5 different outcomes and they’d likely each win at least one. Brock has only gone to decision 3 times in 28 fights, so it’d be interesting to see how he would handle things if the fight went into the later rounds.

Fighter Comparison – Brock Larson Vs. Josh Koscheck

The first of many?

So there you have it, a quick little breakdown of a couple potential (though not overly likely) match-ups. I personally see both fights as being interesting, reasonably marketable, and sound from a rankings standpoint.

Other than fixing the intro, please let me know what you loved/hated. If I don’t get too much hate mail for this I will do it again next week. 8)