Commentary by Kid Nate:  The biggest movement on this months welterweight metas comes as a result of #4 Josh Koscheck having KTFO'd #22 Yoshiyuki Yoshida right out of the top 20 at UFN 16. Koscheck will be fighting again quick fast in a hurry, against one-and-done UFC newbie Paulo Thiago at UFC 95. #6 Diego Sanchez will headline that same event while making his lightweight debut against Joe Stevenson.

Otherwise the division has basically been in suspended animation, waiting for #1 Georges St. Pierre to test himself against #1 lightweight B.J. Penn at UFC 94 on January 31.

On the undercard of that epic fight, #3 Jon Fitch will be facing #25 Akihiro Gono while #2 Thiago Alves waits for the winner of Penn/GSP. #7 Matt Hughes and #9 Matt Serra will face each other sometime in the spring, possibly in May.

#8 Carlos Condit will likely defend his WEC belt against #15 Brock Larson in March. If he can fend off the game Larson for a second time, Condit will have utterly cleaned out the WEC 170lb division. Not sure what makes sense for him from there. I think its time for him to step up to the UFC.

No word on the fate of #5 Jake Shields. Sadly, its looking like he'll be trapped in the EliteXC morass for some time to come.

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 49 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. Fuller explanation below.

Rankings were compiled from the following sites: 411 Mania (12/26), Fight Magazine, Fight Matrix (1/4), Fighters, Five Ounces of Pain (1/4), Full Contact Fighter, Inside Fighting, Inside MMA, MMA 4 Real (12/29), MMA Blog, MMA ELO, MMA Fighting, MMA Playground (1/5), MMA Rocks (1/4), MMA Torch (12/9), MMA Weekly (12/31), MMA/VT, Sherdog (12/30), TAGG Radio, Total MMA, WAMMA (12/17).

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.