They wouldn’t really hurt the sport if it was done in a way that actually worked but the WAMMA belt system is broken and they portray themselves as “official” and “undisputed” when they are neither. Right now it is an humourous annoyance but when casual fans of the sport hear that they are “official” then it will confuse things and could become a real issue (them being attached to MMA live will get them a lot more exposure, particularly once that show gets a tv timeslot). WAMMA is a for profit organization and with that comes a built in bias (it exist to make money), there is nothing wrong with wanting to make money but you can’t pretend to be unbiased when you have a huge built in bias like that. It’s not about organizations it’s about fighters, you can’t be a sanctioning body for just part of the fighters in the sport and call yourself “official” or “undisputed”.

Of course not – he’s in jail.

their own rankings would have Penn ahead of Aoki. I’ve heard several members of WAMMA’s own ranking board say that Penn would be ranked ahead of him but because Aoki is champion he isn’t ranked at all. You can’t “vote” for Aoki in any position, he just gets to sit atop the division as “undisputed lightweight champion” without it being exposed that he wouldn’t even be #1 in their own rankings.

in that situation Affliction would not only lose the WAMMA title…they would then have to create their own heavyweight belt (should they still be around and wanting to have champions) which is immediately worth less than the belt that they previously had. It’s…bizarre at best

It seems pretty evident that Bloody Elbow has an anti-WAMMA agenda.

Well, yeah, because one of the writers came right out and said he thinks WAMMA is bad for the sport and wants to get rid of it. That’s not an agenda, that’s a pretty damn clear statement of intent. But that has NOTHING to do with the “competing ranking system” that you mention next; that’s a complete red herring. Most of the staff here – and to be fair, the community here as well – has been anti-WAMMA since the day they announced themselves because the flaws in the organization are very obvious and potentially damaging to the sport. It’s not as if ANYONE has ever hidden how they felt, before or after the BE rankings were picked up by USA Today. I doubt anyone around BE is sitting around trying to figure out how to compete with WAMMA…

What seems to keep falling through the cracks is that this isn’t about the ranking system it’s about what is done with those rankings. BE doesn’t sanction fights or award belts, WAMMA does, that is the whole reason they exist. People want to make this about rankings vs rankings or that this has something to do with competing rankings but it doesn’t, it’s about what they are using the rankings for. BE doesn’t use the rankings for anything at all, they are for informative and entertainment purposes, WAMMA is using it’s rankings for the purpose of determining fights to sanction as a for profit venture. No one is attacking the WAMMA rankings or trying to downplay them they are being critical about what WAMMA does with them.

to go back and read through my WAMMA stuff. I have been vocally anti-WAMMA since well before our rankings gained any sort of traction beyond just being something people on this site liked to look at.

I started by conducting a phone interview with Dave Szady and Mike Lynch to let them explain their stance even though prior to the interview I told them that I don’t agree with their intentions for the sport. But in the interest of being fair I wanted to let them state things in their own words before I jumped their shit or anything.

I then let our readers ask questions of Dave, Mike and Pat Miletich so that anything people wish had been asked and answered was…it was a town hall type of situation. That one can be found here. It was another attempt to make sure that they were able to address questions so that we weren’t just blindly firing shots.

A lot of things that came up in those two interviews cemented my view on them so I made my stance clear in this piece.

I’ve written several more articles about them. But I should say that I’ve been clear that my problem aren’t with the rankings or ranking board but rather what they are doing with the data coming out of them. My biggest problem right now with the ESPN situation is that the rankings are being presented by a SANCTIONING BODY. That would never fly in boxing or any other similarly structured sport and I’m surprised ESPN would roll with it. I wrote a piece on that which can be read here.

Now do I think our rankings are better? Yeah, if for no other reason than the “champion situation” skews the honest view of the status of the division. Would Aoki really be ranked above Penn were you able to vote for him rather than just listing him as “undisputed champion?” We don’t get to know that because of the structure.

And Nate certainly doesn’t speak for me. I’ve very much in the camp that WAMMA is not a good thing for the sport and I would like to see them go away and am determined to do my part to make that happen. Again, that isn’t an agenda aimed at getting our rankings more recognized than theirs…it’s that I don’t think they are completely honest and above board with what they do and can potentially damage the sport in a lot of ways.

As someone who thinks in business terms, do I want their spot on MMA Live to be filled by our rankings? Hell yeah, I’d be an idiot and a liar to say no. But that isn’t fueling my stance by any means.

Why is this a bad thing?

Because sanctioning bodies destroyed Boxing, and the last thing we need MMA to be, is more like boxing. Not only that, they came onto the scene boasting they would be legit, but I believe Brent showed quite effectively over the past year that they can’t even stay true to their own principles. WAMMA isn’t in it for the better of MMA, they’re in it for WAMMA. The simple fact that they have shown very little transparency, and their deception from the beginning is enough to make them suspect.

Do I want to see BJ fight Aoki? Or Fedor fight Brock? Hell yeah! But not at the expense of the integrity of the sport, which is what’s at stake if WAMMA wins.

Two things
1. It’s a pipe dream that promotions will be allowing fighters free rein or cross promote in the future, this isn’t boxing and it’s getting farther from that every day. Zuffa has no reason to cross-promote and Bellator is signing guys to exclusive contracts, Strikeforce is going to be signing guys to exclusive contracts and Dream isn’t going to let their top fighters fight anywhere they want either for that matter. Even guys who have “non-exclusive” contracts still have to get approval from the promotion to fight somewhere else.

2. WAMMA is a for profit company, they aren’t trying to save the sport they are trying to turn a buck off of it. This is the same system that made such a mess out of boxing, tell me would that be better or worse for the sport of MMA? WAMMA isn’t apply squat for pressure on the UFC they are just being biased against fighters signed to Zuffa and trying to make money off the sport.

No reason to bring pedobear into this.

It can be inferred that not every WAMMA judge makes his rankings public. Those who do are used; those who don’t are ignored.

despite not being involved in the promotion of the fight. Why not the same with the UFC? I have never seen Aoki wearing the WAMMA title, talking about the WAMMA title, mentioning the word WAMMA…same with DREAM. Why is it okay in that situation but not with the UFC? That is a part of it…but the other part is that when you place someone like Aoki at the top of the division simply because he’s the best fighter outside of the UFC it doesn’t provide an HONEST picture of the status of the division.

If he was still ranked he would probably be ranked #2 by the WAMMA committee at least per the people on the committee that I’ve heard from or looked at their rankings on their websites. So instead of being shown at #2 he is placed at #1, giving a dishonest view of the status of the division.

Is GSP telling WAMMA they can’t call him the WAMMA champion? Is Zuffa telling WAMMA they can’t call GSP the WAMMA champion? Zuffa refuses to work with WAMMA but when Dream did the same they just worked around that and called Aoki the WAMMA champion. WAMMA isn’t looking for the best possible solution they are looking for the solution that allows them to make money off of the sport(Ring Magazine in boxing was looking for the best solution to the problem there and if that would most likely work in MMA too).

That would be the actual best possible solution to ranking fighters and naming undisputed champions but there really isn’t a way to directly make money off rankings that way so WAMMA can’t/isn’t going to do that.. Perhaps if Fight! magazine tried something along those lines?

RING Magazine is run by an active fighter and promoter. Give me a break.

“These magazines will be held in an editorial trust where they will be operating totally independent of any influence from me or others from the Golden Boy Companies as it relates to editorial direction or content,”

The editorial trust is very important (and they didn’t clean house and fill it with a bunch of new guys..). I’m sure you’re going to say that this is bullshit. but still…RING remains extremely credible to this day across the boxing community.

Golden Boy supposibly doesn’t control editorial content and more importantly they don’t make money off sanctioning the fights.

they’ve been regarded as the gold standard in boxing for years and years and years because of how they handle rankings and their own title

There is no perfect solution but that is a better one than a sanctioning body with a a financial stake in the belts.

It should be noted that Fred Levin tried to start a sanctioing body in boxing before he started WAMMA but they couldn’t gain any interest/traction in boxing. I’ve wondered about his reasoning for getting into MMA sanctioning?

Yea but in the boxing world Ring Magazine’s integrity really hasn’t.

If Sports Illustrated was trying to promote football games, I wouldn’t read the damn magazine.

Hell, let’s just use Fight Matrix.

someone is going to put a construction paper shell on a cat and say that it’s a turtle and then all of a sudden Justin McCully is champ