Bloody Elbow January 2013 Meta-Rankings: Welterweight

Mark D. Smith-USA TODAY Sports

Tarec Saffiedine's upset victory over Nate Marquardt has him in the top 15 after being completely unranked last month.

Our sources are cited at the bottom of this post.

Rank	Fighter	Points	Promotion	Last Rank
1	Georges St. Pierre	225	UFC	1
2	Johny Hendricks	214	UFC	2
3	Carlos Condit	209	UFC	3
4	Martin Kampmann	178	UFC	7
5	Jon Fitch	175	UFC	4
6	Jake Ellenberger	174	UFC	5
7	Rory MacDonald	170	UFC	6
8	Josh Koscheck	167	UFC	8
9	Nick Diaz	140	UFC	9
10	Ben Askren	113	Bellator	12
11	Demian Maia	103	UFC	11
12	Tarec Saffiedine	87	Strikeforce	NR
13	Nate Marquardt	85	Strikeforce	10
14	Mike Pierce	77	UFC	13
15	Mike Pyle	65	UFC	16
16	Siyar Bahadurzada	58	UFC	15
16	Jay Hieron	58	UFC	17
18	Tyron Woodley	56	UFC	18
19	Erick Silva	54	UFC	20
20	Dong Hyun Kim	49	UFC	19
21	Rick Story	43	UFC	22
22	B.J. Penn	42	UFC	14
22	Paul Daley	42	Bellator	32
24	Diego Sanchez	41	UFC	20
24	Andrey Koreshkov	41	Bellator	26

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.