USAT/SBN August MMA Consensus Rankings: Bantamweight

by Kid Nate on Aug 26, 2010 12:52 PM EDT in MMA Rankings

Rankings compiled by Richard Wade.

Rank	Fighter	%	Promotion	Last Rank
1	Dominick Cruz	100	WEC	1
2	Brian Bowles	94	WEC	2
3	Joseph Benavidez	92	WEC	3
4	Scott Jorgensen	85	WEC	5
5	Miguel Torres	84	WEC	4
6	Takeya Mizugaki	77	WEC	6
7	Masakatsu Ueda	63	Shooto	7
8	Damacio Page	59	WEC	9
9	Wagnney Fabiano	56	WEC	10
10	Rani Yahya	54	WEC	8
11	Charlie Valencia	47	WEC	12
12	Shuichiro Katsumura	45	Shooto	11
13	Masakazu Imanari	41	DEEP	13
14	Akitoshi Tamura	37	WEC	16
15	Eddie Wineland	36	WEC	14
16	Brad Pickett	35	WEC	15
17	Antonio Banuelos	32	WEC	18
18	Abel Cullum	30	KOTC	17
19	Michael McDonald	20	Taichi Palace Fights	19
20	Jeff Curran	31	Bellator	21
21	Cole Escovedo	14	DREAM	20
22	Kenji Osawa	13	DREAM	24
23	Nick Mamalis	12	Bellator	25
24	Ian Loveland	11	WEC	22
25	Clint Godfrey	10	WEC	23
25	Mike Easton	10	UWC	28

#1 Dominic Cruz ably defended his WEC belt against #3 Joseph Benavidez at WEC 50.

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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