Bloody Elbow October MMA Meta-Rankings: Welterweight

Unlike the other charts so far this month, the welterweights were compiled AFTER the most recent UFC events. That means #2 Thiago Alves' win over #4 Josh Koscheck, #17 Dan Hardy's split decision over #21 Akihiro Gono, and #15 Marcus Davis and #24 Chris Lytle's wins at UFC 89 are all accounted for. 

As long as Koschek beats #13 Yoshiyuki Yoshida at Ultimate Fight Night  16 "Fight for the Troops" I think he'll hold fairly steady at the rankings. There's no shame in losing by decision to the #2 guy in the division.

As for Gono and Hardy, I must say for the record that I'm with the judge who scored the fight for Gono. Hardy fought a classic "Bisping" win on points fight but never went for a knockout or even came close. Gono was scoring on the feet and got several takedowns, ramping up his attacks as the fight came to a close. But it is what it is and Gono lost. Davis and Lytle seem to be headed for a collision that will likely knock the loser out of the rankings.

No word on what's next for #3 Jon Fitch, #6 Diego Sanchez or #9 Karo Parisyan. #7 Matt Hughes and #10 Matt Serra are expected to finally fight early in 2009. #11 Mike Swick gets Jonathan Goulet at "Fight for the Troops."

WEC Champ #8 Carlos Condit will defend against #13 Brock Larson at some point in early 2009.

#5 Jake Shields is in limbo due to the EliteXC collapse but could be headed to the UFC. #19 Nick Diaz plans to fight in Japan for New Years but no word on for whom, DREAM or SENGOKU.

Richard has added some very cool charts, including the standings of each fighter in the top 25 against top 10 and top 25 competition. Thanks Richard!

NOTE: The Meta-Rankings are not the subjective opinion of the BloodyElbow team, but rather a compilation of the rankings of over twenty leading MMA web sites. It is our opinion that these are the most informative MMA rankings anywhere.

Based on the premise that opinions are like assholes, everybody has one and they all stink. instead of putting up our own subjective fighter rankings, we compile and average the rankings of every source we could find online.

The goal is to show how the MMA community rates the fighters, not to bore you with our opinions.

Be sure and look at the points, they're a much more telling number than the ranking. There's clearly a huge gulf between the top 9 fighters and those that follow.

A total of 45 fighters were ranked in the top 25 by one source or another, for reasons of sanity I only track the top 25 (26 due to a tie) most highly rated fighters.

25 points are awarded for a first place ranking, 16 for a 10th place ranking, 1 for a 25th place ranking. A formula is used to "normalize" the data so all fighters are awarded points from those lists that do not include a full 25 fighters. Fuller explanation below.

Rankings were compiled from the following sites: MMA-ELO, FightMatrix, HDNet/InsideMMA, MMA/VT, Total-MMA, Fight Magazine, FCFighter, MMA Playground, Houston Chronicle Brawl Sports, MMA Ratings, Fighters.com, MMA Fighting, TAGG Radio, 411 Mania, MMA Weekly, Sherdog, and CagePotato. 

The normalization scheme as explained by JCS of FightMatrix  is here:

The "normalization number" (new name) would be:

120
divided by
(Total Fighters Found in Any List minus 10)

Every fighter found somewhere else, but on a Top 10 list would be assigned this number.

The "normalization" number would not apply to a fighter not found on a Top 25 list. They would simply get 0.

So the process would be:

Do all of the Top 25 lists first, #1 = 25, #2 = 24…. #24 = 2, #25 = 1
Do all of the Top 10 lists, same scoring structure.. stops at #10 = 16

Figure out that normalization variable.

Fill in the normalization variable to all fighters not found in the Top 10 lists, but found elsewhere.

Do your totals and rank.