USAT/SBN December MMA Consensus Rankings: Middleweight

Rankings compiled by Richard Wade.

Although #1 Anderson Silva remains at #1 a year later, no one else in the middleweight top ten is in the same position as they were twelve months ago.

In fact, 60% of last year's top ten are no longer among the division's elite. Some of them left the weight class like Rich Franklin (was #8) or #25 Gegard Mousasi (was #6). Others suffered in and out of the cage/ring like #12 Robbie Lawler (was #4), #13 Paulo Fihlo (was #7),  #15 Kazuo Misaki (was #10), and Matt Lindland (was #9).

#2 Nate Marquart (was #5) rose off of dramatic KO victories over #4 Demian Maia (was #13) and Wilson Gouveia in the last year. Luck came to Nate in the form of Dan Henderson's negotiating difficulties with the UFC which spared him a very very tough #1 contender fight. Now he just has to win a very tough #1 contender fight against #6 Chael Sonnen (was #15) to earn a crack at the winner of Anderson Silva and #5 Vitor Belfort (was unranked at MW) for the title.

Sonnen owes his big jump in the rankings over the last year to the lingering impact of beating Paulo Fihlo and his recent utter domination of #8 Yushin Okami (was #3). His loss to Demian Maia only blunted his rise.

#3 Dan Henderson (was #2) is one of the rare fighters to coach TUF, win three straight and still not get resigned by the UFC. He felt he was promised a title shot for KTFO'ing #14 Michael Bisping (was #16) at UFC 100. Now it appears that he might be getting not one, not two, but maybe even three title shots with Strikeforce.

A year ago #7 Jake Shields was the #4 welterweight in the world. Wins over Lawler and Jason "Mayhem" Miller and the Strikeforce middleweight title have propelled him into the top 10 at MW. He may have to defend that belt against Henderson, so we'll see how long he's in the division at all.

#9 Yoshihiro Akiyama (was #11) won his American debut at UFC 100 and took Fight of the Night honors but he had a co-headlining fight at UFC 110 against Wanderlei Silva taken away from him and there's no word on when he'll be fighting next.

#10 Mamed Khalidov (was unranked) rose at the expense of #11 Jorge Santiago (was #17). Santiago had been rising steadily in the rankings for almost two years since winning the Strikeforce middleweight tourny in 2008 and then taking the Sengoku belt with wins over Misaki and Kazuhiro Nakamura. Some of that career momentum transferred to Khalidov when he knocked Santiago out.

Based on the premise that all MMA rankings are subjective but that it’s still useful and informative to know who the online MMA community as a whole ranks as the best fighters in MMA, we collect and average the rankings of the top MMA websites to produce our consensus rankings. Show more "

We compile the top MMA rankings from each of our sources and award 25 points 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. This formula ensures that each ranking site awards the same number of total points regardless of how many fighters they choose to rank. Each fighter’s total is divided by the number of possible points to determine their standing in the Consensus Rankings.