USAT/SBN August MMA Consensus Rankings: Featherweight

by Kid Nate on Aug 26, 2010 12:10 PM EDT in MMA Rankings

Rankings compiled by Richard Wade.

Rank	Fighter	%	Promotion	Last Rank
1	Jose Aldo	92	WEC	1
2	Manny Gamburyan	86	WEC	2
3	Mike Brown	81	WEC	3
4	Urijah Faber	81	WEC	4
5	Marlon Sandro	73	WVR	5
6	Bibiano Fernandes	71	DREAM	6
7	Hatsu Hioki	69	WVR	7
8	Josh Grispi	64	WEC	8
8	Michihiro Omigawa	68	DREAM	9
10	Masanori Kanehara	39	WVR	10
11	Rafael Assuncao	32	WEC	16
12	Deividas Taurosevicius	31	WEC	12
13	L.C. Davis	31	WEC	11
14	Leonard Garcia	29	WEC	14
15	Diego Nunes	97	WEC	15
16	Yuji Hoshino	27	WVR	13
17	Hiroyuki Takaya	26	DREAM	17
18	Joe Warren	25	Bellator	18
19	Chad Mendes	25	WEC	20
20	Mark Hominick	22	WEC	19
21	Joe Soto	21	Bellator	21
22	Joachim Hansen	19	DREAM	22
23	Takeshi Inoue	18	Shooto	23
24	Kazuyuki Miyata	15	DREAM	25
25	Chan Sung Jung	15	WEC	27

#1 Jose Aldo will defend his WEC title against #2 Manny Gamburyan at WEC 51 in September.

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.

We are now moving to what JCS of Fight Matrix has described as assumed rankings in an attempt to rank fighters who move between weight classes. This has been the biggest problem with the consensus rankings and we believe this new methodology will rectify that.

Let's take Anderson Silva for instance. 87% (13 of 15) of our panelists have him at Light Heavyweight and 100% (15 of 15) at Middleweight. On the 13 ballots that ranked Silva at 205, we took the average (21.2). We then reduced that number by half the percentage of Light Heavyweight ballots that he was not included on. Say he's not on 30% of them, then we do a 15% penalty on the average that we found in the previous step. That number is then used instead of the usual "normalization number" to provide points from those not ranking the fighter in the weight class in question. This avoids fighters being excessively penalized by confusion about which weight class they belong.

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