#1 Georges St. Pierre will defend his title against #3 Jake Shields at UFC 129. A successful defense will almost certainly result in a move to middleweight and the booking of a megafight with Middleweight champion Anderson Silva.

The winner of this weekend’s bout at UFC 127 between #2 Jon Fitch and #9 B.J. Penn will no doubt be in line for a title shot either against Jake Shields or an as yet unknown opponent for the vacant Welterweight title.

#4 Thiago Alves is set to take on #23 Rick Story at UFC 130 in an interesting clash of styles.

UFC Live 3 will be headlined by #7 Martin Kampmann and #13 Diego Sanchez. The winner will likely find himself "in the mix."

#8 Nick Diaz fell a spot after defending his belt against the now completely unranked Evangelista Santos. His next challenger will likely be #10 Paul Daley. Daley likely won’t tumble out of the rankings with a loss, so it’s a definite step up in competition.

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.