Rankings compiled by Richard Wade.

With #1 Fedor Emelianenko's next fight date forever receding just beyond the horizon like a mirage in the desert, fans of top flight heavyweight action are turning increasingly to the UFC.

And this Saturday, the UFC is delivering a treat with UFC 111's interim title fight between #3 Frank Mir and #6 Shane Carwin. The winner is expected to challenge for #2 Brock Lesnar's belt at UFC 116 in July.

Last Saturday's UFC on Versus 1 was a nice appetizer for the Mir-Carwin tilt with #7 Junior Dos Santos' demolition of #13 Gabriel Gonzaga.

Dos Santos and #4 Cain Velasquez are both placed for title shots of their own and Dana White is dismissing talk of a title eliminator fight between them. I hate to see these great fighters sit on the shelf for month after month, but that's what it looks like we're in for.

There's also no word on what's next for #5 Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira after his loss to Velasquez at UFC 110.

Meanwhile on the other side of the tracks, #8 Brett Rogers is expected to face #9 Alistair Overeem at Strikeforce: St Louis on Showtime in May. It's unclear as of now whether or not Overeem's belt will be on the line. #10 Andrei Arlovski will return to action on that same card against #17 Antonio Silva. Both men will be seeking a return to contention and to avoid a second straight loss.

#11 Josh Barnett finally returned to action at DREAM.13 this weekend with a fairly bad performance against the unranked Siala-Mou "Mighty Mo" Siligia. DREAM officials mused afterwards about a possible Barnett vs Overeem match with the winner to face Fedor.

Meanwhile #12 Fabricio Werdum waits patiently for his promised Strikeforce fight with Fedor. The latest word is that June is a possibility. At this point I honestly feel the chances of seeing Fedor vs Brock Lesnar this year are almost as good as our chances of seeing Werdum vs Fedor in June.

NOTE: What the hell is Ray Mercer STILL doing in the rankings?!?!

For those of you who are not familiar with how we do the consensus rankings: we do not add any subjective opinion to the rankings. Instead they are a compilation and averaging of the top ranking sites and our select panel of MMA writers. The goal is not to create an subjective ranking of who is the best fighter but rather to objectively document which fighters are considered to be the best by the MMA community.

Ray Mercer busts into our top 25 because he is ranked at #13 by FightMatrix.com a computer-based objective rankings system. They assign points to fighters strictly based on the rankings of the opponents those fighters have beaten. When Ray Mercer beat Tim Sylvia, Sylvia was ranked in the top 13. By FightMatrix' protocols that caused Mercer to leapfrog above Sylvia even as Sylvia dropped.

We have modified our rankings panel this month to address the issues with our methodology that the Mercer situation has brought to light.

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. 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.