Bloody Elbow November 2008 MMA Meta-Rankings: Light Heavyweight

Not a lot of movement here as there were only a couple of ranked fighters active in the last month. The biggest move is #11 Luis Arthur Cane jumping from #18 as a result of beating #17 (was #10) Rameau Thierry Soukoudjou at UFC 89.

#10 Antonio Rogerio Nogueira and #16 Renato "Babalu" Sobral both fought and won in November but neither bout really meant anything beyond their staying active and drawing a paycheck. Nogueira is set to fight #12 Vladimir Matyushenko at the Affliction event in January. Babalu was set to fight Matt Lindland at a catchweight on that card, but its been decided that he'll fight TBD at 205lbs instead. All of that is contingent on Affliction actually producing a second event.

As long as they're wasting money, I'd love to see Affliction sign Soukoudjou to go up against Babalu. The winner could be on his way back to relevance in the division (ie resigning with the UFC), the loser will have a long road back.

There have been no developments for the other ranked fighters outside the UFC -- #15 Tito Ortiz, #20 Rafael Calvacante, and #22 Ricardo Arona. I expect Tito and Rafael "Feijao" to be in limbo until the EliteXC/CBS situation is resolved, although Tito could give up on his network dreams and crawl back to the UFC at any point. Arona will be heading back to Japan some time in 2009, I expect. Possibly to World Victory Road which is building a passable light heavyweight division around #38 Muhammed "King Mo" Lawal.

The UFC Light Heavyweight division has some momentous matches coming, but the December metarankings will probably come out before they happen.

AT UFC 92 on December 27, we've got #1 Forrest Griffin defending his title against #4 Rashad Evans in a title fight of former TUF winners. The funny part is that there's only been limited bitching about that since both guys earned the fight, Griffin with wins over #9 Mauricio "Shogun" Rua and #2 Quinton "Rampage" Jackson and Evans KTFO'd #6 Chuck Liddell. The winner of that match should spend the first quarter of 2009 safely atop the rankings.

On that same card, Rampage will seek his revenge against #5 Wanderlei Silva with the winner likely to get the next title shot. Jackson's lost twice to Wanderlei, we'll see if the cage makes the difference for Rampage. If he loses to his old nemesis, it will have been a very bad 2008 for Rampage. #21 Matt Hamill will fight the unranked Reese Andy that night as well.

At UFC 93, #13 Rich Franklin and #14 Dan Henderson will face-off in a bout that seems to have more relevance in the middleweight division than at 205lbs. That same card will see the long-delayed return of Shogun in a rematch against light heavy debutant Mark Coleman.

In January at UFC 94, #3 Lyoto Machida will take on #8 Thiago Silva in a battle of the unbeaten Brazilians. The winner will have an excellent claim on #1 contender status, but I expect them to have to wait in line behind the guys who can draw -- Wanderlei, Rampage, maybe even middleweight #1 Anderson Silva if he beats #6 Chuck Liddell in one rumored scenario. That event will also see #19 Stephan Bonnar return to action against the undefeated Jon Jones.

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.

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: MMA Fighter, MMA Weekly, Sherdog, 411 Mania, WAMMA, Fighters.com, MMA Ratings, Total MMA, HDNet/Inside MMA, MMA Playground, FightMatrix, CagePotato, TAGG Radio, FCFighter, MMA ELO, Five Ounces of Pain, Houston Chronicle Brawl Sports, MMA News, MMA Blogger, MMA 4 Real, MMA On Tap, FIGHT! Magazine, MMA/VT (Japan) and MMA EQ.

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.

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