Commentary by Kid Nate: #1 Rashad Evans jumped to the top of the rankings with his TKO win over #3 Forrest Griffin at UFC 92. Quite a meteoric rise for Rashad, who was ranked #8 as recently as the August meta-rankings. But Rashad got there the old fashioned way -- he earned it.

#2 Quinton "Rampage" Jackson held his position by KTFO'ing #6 Wanderlei Silva at the same event. This sets up Jackson for a shot at Evans' title, although he claims he'd rather get his revenge on #3 Forrest Griffin before trying to reclaim the title.

Poor #4 Lyoto Machida. He was meta-ranked as high as #2 back in June before the title started trading hands. Now even if he beats #8 Thiago Silva at UFC 94, he still won't get a title shot.

It's still unclear who's next for #5 Chuck Liddell. Rumors he'll face #1 Middleweight Anderson Silva at UFC 100, or rematch #6 Wanderlei Silva or even #9 Mauricio "Shogun" Rua (assuming Rua beats Mark Coleman at UFC 93) have all been floated.

#7 Keith Jardine won't be his next opponent, despite Chuck requesting a rematch. Jardine will instead be fighting #10 Luis Arthur Cane at UFC 97.

If the January 24th Affliction show actually happens, #11 Antonio Rogerio Nogueira will face #12 Vladimir Matyushenko and try to avenge his 2002 decision loss to "the Janitor." On that same cross-your-fingers-but-don't-hold-your-breath-that-it'll-happen card, #14 Renato "Babalu" Sobral is scheduled to face #17 Rameau Thierry Sokoudjou. You can say what you want about their disastrous business decisions, but the Affliction guys do seem to pay attention to the meta-rankings.

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.

A total of 47 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 (12/11), Cage Potato (12/28), Fight Matrix (1/4), Fight Magazine, Five Ounces of Pain (1/4), Full Contact Fighter, Inside Fighting, Inside MMA, MMA 4 Real (1/7), MMA Blog, MMA ELO (1/5), MMA Fighting (1/4), MMA Playground (1/7), MMA Rocks (1/4), MMA Torch (11/24), MMA Weekly (1/7), MMA/VT, Sherdog (1/7), Sports Illustrated (1/6), 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.