Bloody Elbow September 2008 MMA Meta-Rankings: Light Heavyweight

The action this month was all about Rashad Evans' upset KO win over Chuck Liddell. This accounts for Evans' surge up to #4 and Liddell's drop to #5. The only other big move is middleweight transplant Rich Franklin jumping six spots to #16 after getting his first win at 205lbs in several years.

Dan Henderson hasn't fought in this division since early 2007 and yet he's stubborly hanging on at #12. Ricardo Arona continues to drop, this time to #20 and I expect him to vanish entirely if he doesn't manage to cut a deal and get back in the ring soon.

The next fight with rankings implications is the #8 Keith Jardine vs #17 Brandon Vera at UFC 89. A win could establish Vera as an emerging contender at 205. Jardine is in a must-win position if he's to stay relevant. #9 Sokoudjou vs. #21 Luis Arthur Cane is on that same card. Sokoudjou, who rocketed into the top of the rankings with shocking KO upsets over Ricardo Arona and Antonio Rogerio Nogueira, now finds himself in the gunsights of an up and comer looking to make a name for himself.

No word on when any of the Affliction signed fighters will be fighting again. Hopefully we'll see #11 Nogueira vs #14 Matyushenko soon, maybe even on Showtime. Poor Babalu Sobral got hurt and had to sit out the Strikeforce at the Playboy Mansion card.

No word on when #7 Mauricio "Shogun" Rua will return from surgery. Rumors of a return match against #5 Chuck Liddell are still echoing around.

ABOUT THE META-RANKINGS: A full methodology is in the extended entry, but the short version is that they are a compilation of the rankings of 20+ leading MMA web sites and magazines. In short the meta-rankings don't represent the opinion of me or the Bloody Elbow staff, rather they are an attempt to quantify the consensus opinions of the MMA online community at large.

Based on the premise that opinions are like assholes, everybody has one and they all stink. instead of putting up our own subjective fighter rankings, we compile and average the rankings of every source we could find online.

The goal is to show how the MMA community rates the fighters, not to bore you with our opinions.

Be sure and look at the points, they're a much more telling number than the ranking. There's clearly a huge gulf between the top 9 fighters and those that follow.

A total of 43 fighters were ranked in the top 25 by one source or another, for reasons of sanity I only track the top 25 (26 due to a tie) most highly rated fighters.

25 points are awarded 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. Fuller explanation below.

Rankings were compiled from the following sites: WAMMA, MMA Fighting, MMA-ELO, FCFighter, TAGG Radio, Inside Fighting, 411 Mania, MMA Weekly, Sherdog, Cage Potato, MMA On Tap, Fight Matrix, MMA Playground, HDNet/Inside MMA, Houston Chronicle Brawl Sports, Total MMA, Figure 4 Online, MMA 4 Real.

The normalization scheme as explained by JCS of FightMatrix is here:

The “normalization number” (new name) would be:

120
divided by
(Total Fighters Found in Any List minus 10)

Every fighter found somewhere else, but on a Top 10 list would be assigned this number.

The “normalization” number would not apply to a fighter not found on a Top 25 list. They would simply get 0.

So the process would be:

Do all of the Top 25 lists first, #1 = 25, #2 = 24…. #24 = 2, #25 = 1
Do all of the Top 10 lists, same scoring structure.. stops at #10 = 16

Figure out that normalization variable.

Fill in the normalization variable to all fighters not found in the Top 10 lists, but found elsewhere.

Do your totals and rank.