USA TODAY/MMA Nation January 2012 Consensus Rankings

NOTE: We have modified our method of gathering our rankings because the strict scheduling requirements of USA TODAY clash with the more irregular schedules of many of the MMA rankings sites. That was causing us to use a different set of sources almost every month. That combined with the small number of sites doing top 25 rankings was causing the Consensus rankings to have a lower "signal to noise" ratio than we would like -- that is if fighters are going to be moving up or down I would like it to be because there has been a change in the consensus opinion, not a change in our sources. Therefore we have cut back our sources to just those sites that we can depend on to update every month. We have also contacted many of the rankers that only publish top 10 lists and asked them to provide top 25 lists. As always we listen to your suggestions and are always working to improve the USAT/SBN Consensus MMA Rankings.

Also worth noting is that this month we instituted a rule that if a fighter is active in other weight classes he must have competed within a given weight class within the last 365 days in order to be ranked in that class in an attempt to improve the overall quality of our product. In order to be ranked at all, a fighter must have been active within the last 450 days.