Thanks to Richard  this month we're adding featherweights to the BloodyElbow Meta-rankings.

I've got to admit I don't keep up with this division as well as I should. Feel free to correct my mistakes in the comments!

First off, the WEC is clearly the dominant promotion in these rankings with 10 of the top 25 and 4 of the top 10.

Between former UFC lightweights like #13 Jens Pulver and #11 Leonard Garcia moving down to fight at 145 in the WEC and Japanese stars like #7 Akitoshi Tamura and #14 Hiroyuki Takaya coming to the states to fight under their banner, the WEC is a real talent magnet.

Clearly the big upcoming match is #1 Urijah Faber vs #2 Mike Thomas Brown at WEC on November 5th (its a make up date for the hurricane cancelled September 10th date). Urijah is as dominating in this division as Fedor, Anderson Silva, GSP or B.J. Penn in theirs. Brown should be a tough fight for him but is a huge underdog.

That card will also feature Pulver vs Garcia in a fight I wish both guys could win. A Garcia win could land him a title shot against Faber. Not sure what Pulver would have to do to get a rematch.

At WEC 37 in December #3 Wagnney Fabiano will make his WEC debut against the aforementioned Akitoshi Tamura. That's a big fight, pitting the former IFL champ Fabiano against the shooto standout Tamura. I figure the winner will be on a fast track to challenge Faber as well.

Next month I'll have more to say about the Japanese featherweight scene, feel free to educate me in the comments.

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.

Thanks to Richard for the charts above and his help in compiling this month's Meta-rankings.

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 50 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, MMA Fighting, MMA Weekly, Cage Potato, Octagon Buzz, FCFighter, Houston Chronicle Brawl Sports, HDNet/Inside MMA, FightMatrix, Sherdog, and MMA/VT, 

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.