| Fighter | Points | Promotion | Last Rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Fedor Emelianenko | 450 | Affliction/M-1 | 1 |
| 2. Antonio Rodrigo Noguiera | 431 | UFC | 2 |
| 3. Andrei Arlovski | 392 | Affliction | 3 |
| 4. Josh Barnett | 389 | Affliction/WVR | 4 |
| 5. Fabricio Werdum | 362 | UFC | 5 |
| 6. Tim Sylvia | 350 | Affliction/Adrenaline | 6 |
| 7. Randy Couture | 303 | UFC | 7 |
| 8. Gabriel Gonzaga | 298 | UFC | 8 |
| 9. Mirko Filipovic | 238 | DREAM | 9 |
| 10. Aleksander Emelianenko | 201 | Affliction | 11 |
| 11. Ben Rothwell | 174 | Affliction/Adrenaline | 10 |
| 11. Frank Mir | 174 | UFC | 12 |
| 13. Alistair Overeem | 163 | DREAM | 13 |
| 14. Sergei Kharitonov | 139 | DREAM | 15 |
| 15. Cheick Kongo | 113 | UFC | 14 |
| 16. Brock Lesnar | 98 | UFC | 17 |
| 17. Roy Nelson | 96 | Affliction | 16 |
| 18. Antonio Silva | 83 | EliteXC | 19 |
| 18. Cain Velasquez | 83 | UFC | 20 |
| 18. Jeff Monson | 83 | ??? | 20 |
| 21. Heath Herring | 82 | UFC | 18 |
| 22. Pedro Rizzo | 77 | Affliction | 22 |
| 23. Marcio Cruz | 72 | WVR | 23 |
| 24. Jake O'Brien | 57 | UFC | 24 |
| 25. Mark Hunt | 53 | DREAM | 25 |
Here are the October Meta-rankings. Please be aware that they were compiled before the most recent UFCs. So #6 Fabricio Werdum's high-ranking represents the consensus of the MMA online community before he got whupped by Junior dos Santos.
Obviously the fates of the EliteXC fighters are up in the air. Its looking like legal matters will keep them all off the free agent market for some time. This is another bad outcome of the EliteXC debacle.
The heavyweights are easily the thinnest of all the divisions. If you take a gander at the full charts in the full entry you'll see just how easy it is to get at least one site to rank you in the top 25. Ricco Rodriguez, Kevin Ferguson, and numerous other non-contenders find their way onto the listings. As did light heavyweight cum middleweight Gorjan Reljic.
Almost two years after they bought out PRIDE, the UFC is finally beginning to put together a top-notch HW division. The upcoming four man mini-tournament of #2 Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, # 11 Frank Mir, #7 Randy Couture and #16 Brock Lesnar should culminate in a clear-cut champ.
And with the emergence of #18 Cain Velasquez, Shane Carwin and Junior dos Santos, plus established vets #8 Gabriel Gonzaga, #15 Cheick Kongo, #21 Heath Herring and #24 Jake O'Brien the UFC can now be said to have a legit world-class heavyweight division.
Of course its highly unlikely that that the UFC champ will dislodge Fedor Emelianenko from the top of the rankings any time before late 2009.
And that's where the rest of the division is hanging on the fortunes of Affliction and DREAM/K-1 now that EliteXC is done for. Hopefully Affliction will at least get to put on the Fedor/Andrei Arlovski dream fight before going under.
We'll also have to wait and see what becomes of the EliteXC fighters. Maybe they'll re-emerge on CBS/Showtime. Maybe champ Antonio Silva will get to sit out his steroid suspension in contract limbo.
NOTE: The Meta-Rankings are not the subjective opinion of the BloodyElbow team, but rather a compilation of the rankings of over twenty leading MMA web sites. It is our opinion that these are the most informative MMA rankings anywhere.
Thanks to Richard for the charts above and his help in compiling this month's Meta-rankings.
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 46 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, Fighters.com, MMA Ratings, Fight Magazine, Total-MMA, Houston Chronicle Brawl Sports, MMA/VT, HDNet/Inside MMA, MMA Playground, FightMatrix, CagePotato, Sherdog, MMA Weekly, 411 Mania, TAGG Radio, FCFighter, MMA-ELO, and MMAFighting.com.
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 = 16Figure 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.