Here's the November metas. 

Not a great deal of movement to comment on. The UFC/Zuffa continues its utter dominance of this division with 9/10 of the top 10 signed to Zuffa. #4 Jake Shields is the only exception. With the demise of EliteXC, the former champ is in limbo although his lawyers are claiming he's a free-agent due to a 30 day clause in his contract. We'll see about that. If and when he does get free it seems likely that he's headed for the UFC as well.

Only four other fighters in the top 25 are outside the UFC or Zuffa-owned WEC. No rival promotion is anywhere close to building a critical mass in this division.  #12 Nick Thompson hasn't fought since his quick loss to Jake Shields in July and I haven't heard anything about him returning to Japan in the near future. DREAM's #14 Hayato Sakurai is surging a little in the rankings following his September win over UFC vet Kuniyoshi Hironaka. No word on what's next for Japan's top welterweight. Rumor has it that ronin Nick Diaz may be fighting Joe Riggs in a revenge match soon.

Former IFL champ #15 Jay Hieron owes his surge in the rankings due to Five Ounces of Pain updating their rankings and putting him in the top 10. The differences between #13 Brock Larson and #19 Chris Lytle are tiny and picking up a top 10 spot makes for a big jump in a tight field. Hieron's supposed to fight the undefeated Jason High at Affliction's January 24th event. Cross your fingers for that event happening.

As far as upcoming fights in the UFC, #1 Georges St. Pierre will defend his belt against #22 B.J. Penn in what Luke is already calling the fight of our generation at UFC 94 in January. It will be interesting to the chaos in the rankings should B.J. pull off the win. He's already being ranked in this division by several sites in anticipation of the title fight.

#5 Josh Koscheck will follow his tough decision loss to #2 Thiago Alves at UFC 90, by taking on  #16 Yoshiyuki Yoshida at December 10th's Fight for the Troops. Less than 60 days after a brutal bout with one of the toughest strikers in the division, Koscheck will need to thoroughly dominate Yoshida or face a fall in the rankings. That same night will see #11 Mike Swick face UFC journeyman Jonathan Goulet in what should be a gimme fight for Swick.

#25 Brad Blackburn will seek his second UFC win at UFC 92 against journeyman Ryo Chonan. That will be a stiff test for Blackburn.  At UFC 93, #16 Marcus Davis and #21 Chris Lytle will throw down. The winner of that match will hopefully get back on the contender track in the UFC.

In addition to the epic title fight, UFC 94 will pit #10 Karo Parisyan against fast-rising Korean star Dong Hyun "Stun Gun" Kim. And  #3 Jon Fitch will look to get back on track against #24 Akihiro Gono. Not an easy bout for Gono.

Richard has added some very cool charts. 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 Fighting, MMA ELO, FCFighter, TAGG Radio, MMA Weekly, Sherdog, CagePotato, FightMatrix, MMA Playground, HDNet/InsideMMA,  MMA/VT (Japan), Houston Chronicle Brawl Sports,  Total MMA,  Fight Magazine, MMA Ratings, WAMMA, MMA EQ, Five Ounces of Pain, MMA News, Inside Fighting, MMA On Tap, MMA 4 Real, and MMA Blog.

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.