MMA Ranking Talk

Standard Intro, I’ll make it better later

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)