Bloody Elbow Meta-Rankings: Heavyweight

Here's our final edition of the first round of the Meta-Rankings. We've already done Light Heavyweight, Middleweight, Welterweight, and Lightweight. And I have to say, this division is the most jacked up of any of the divisions except maybe lightweight. And the difference with that division is that things are clearly improving in that division where the Heavyweights seem to be in a downward spiral.

UFC's acquisition of PRIDE was supposed to fix all that. But PRIDE imports Cro Cop, Big Nog, Werdum and Heath Herring have all been pretty much duds so far. And of course they tried and failed to sign Fedor, lost Randy and refuse to have anything to do with Josh Barnett. Aleksander and Kharitonov seem to have been lost along with Fedor.

UFC has 7 of these 13 top heavyweights signed, but none of them appear to be set to go on a tear. They made the investment to sign Brock Lesnar. He could potentially be the star that saves the division but there are many many ways that plan could go wrong. But let's get back to the rankings.

People still think Fedor is far and away the best, but he's no longer the unquestioned top of the division. Randy Couture's amazing 2007 has propelled him to #2 but the legal quagmire he's trapped in will slowly erode his standing. If Fedor can't fight some top competition soon, his slide will accelerate.

Big Nog and Big Tim will be fighting for the "interim" UFC belt in February. It will be interesting to see how far a commanding performance can catapult the winner of that fight. #4 Gabriel Gonzaga and #10 Fabricio Werdum will meet this saturday at UFC 80. It'll be fun to see how that fight impacts the rankings.

Rankings are based on an average of 6 Media Rankings (MMA Weekly, Sherdog, Irish Whip, MMA on Tap, our own Luke Thomas', and 5 oz of Pain), Fan Rankings (represented by MMA HQ Rankings) and Computer Rankings (represented by Fight Matrix). If we missed a good ranking someone is doing let us know, we'll add them to the mix. Particularly other computerized or fan vote rankings.

A #1 vote is worth 10 points, #2 is 9 points and so on. Media rankings are totaled and divided by 6 to represent the average media ranking, this is then added to the computer and fan ranking points to create the total (perfect score is 30 points).