Not a lot of action in the lightweight division in the last month. (Note that these charts were compiled BEFORE the #7 Sean Sherk vs #13 Tyson Griffin fight at UFC 90.)

This weekend's Sengoku VI will see #2 Takanori Gomi in another tune-up fight, this time against the unranked Sergey Golyaev, his third straight fight against an unranked opponent since his loss no-contest against Nick Diaz in 2007.  Golyaev is a decent fighter with submissions skills but shouldn't be more than a road bump for Gomi.

Gomi's real rivals will be fighting it out on the same card: #15 Eiji Mitsuoka, former Pancrase star Satoru Kitaoka, Cage Force champ Mizuto Hirota, and  DEEP champ Kazunori Yokota. They all won impressively against top international competition at Sengoku IV, beating Rodrigo Damm, Clay French, Ryan Schultz, and Bojan Kosednar respectively. Don't sleep on Kitaoka, he's damn good, has fought at welterweight in the past and has an excellent chance to win the tourny and fight Gomi early next year.

Mitsuoka's rise in the rankings reflects not just that strong performance, but the buzz around the Sengoku tourny  AND especially his  2007 Shooto decision win over #5 Joachim Hansen. Regardless of who wins that tournament, Gomi will have a worthy challenger in 2009. If Mitsuoka wins the tournament I wouldn't be surprised to see him in the top 10.

Speaking of Hansen, he'll have his hands full at K-1 Dynamite! when he faces #6 Gesias "JZ" Calvancante. JZ was favored to win the DREAM tournament that Hansen took. No word on what's next for the other DREAM lightweights although #4 Shinya Aoki, #10 Tatsuya Kawajiri, #14 Mitsuhiro Ishida and #17 Caol Uno are all expected to fight at K-1 Dynamite! on NYE. No word on potential opponents.

No word on when Ishida will return to Strikeforce, although he's rumored to be bringing friends with him next time. Strikeforce champ #9 Josh Thomson will be defending his belt against veteran Yves Edwards in a rematch of their classic UFC bout. Edwards won that first one spectacularly so Thomson would be foolish to take him lightly.

As for the UFC talent pool, divisional titan #1 B.J. Penn will be moving up to fight Georges St. Pierre for the welterweight belt at UFC 94. That should be an epic and if Penn wins I doubt we'll see him return to 155lbs.

#7 Sean Sherk had to win some fans with his performance against #13 Tyson Griffin in their fight-of-the-night at UFC 90. Sherk may move up slightly in that aftermath but I doubt Griffin will fall far. Sherk is looking to fight the winner of the UFC 91 clash between # 8 Ken Florian and # 12 Joe Stevenson. The winner of those two fights could very well find himself holding the UFC lightweight title if Penn chooses to renounce it for the welterweight belt.

#21 Gray Maynard should continue to climb after his decision win over Rich Clementi. #23 Jim Miller made a successful transition from the IFL to the UFC, impressively beating David Baron who had been ranked at welterweight. I'll expect to see Miller on the fast track in the UFC. #22 Nathan Diaz will have to wait until 2009 to fight after Clay Guida's injured foot canceled their match.

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 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. Each site consulted awards a total of 325 points. Fuller explanation below.

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

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.