| Rank | Fighter | % | Promotion | Last Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Dominick Cruz | 100 | UFC | 1 |
| 2 | Brian Bowles | 93 | UFC | 2 |
| 3 | Joseph Benavidez | 92 | UFC | 3 |
| 4 | Scott Jorgensen | 85 | UFC | 4 |
| 5 | Miguel Torres | 83 | UFC | 5 |
| 6 | Urijah Faber | 71 | UFC | 6 |
| 7 | Takeya Mizugaki | 67 | UFC | 7 |
| 8 | Brad Pickett | 54 | UFC | 12 |
| 9 | Wagnney Fabiano | 51 | UFC | 8 |
| 10 | Masakatsu Ueda | 49 | Shooto | 9 |
| 11 | Rani Yahya | 40 | UFC | 10 |
| 12 | Masakazu Imanari | 39 | DEEP | 13 |
| 13 | Demetrious Johnson | 39 | UFC | 14 |
| 14 | Damacio Page | 38 | UFC | 11 |
| 15 | Eddie Wineland | 36 | UFC | 15 |
| 16 | Antonio Banuelos | 30 | UFC | 16 |
| 17 | Charlie Valencia | 29 | UFC | 17 |
| 18 | Michael McDonald | 26 | UFC | 18 |
| 19 | Akitoshi Tamura | 22 | WVR | 19 |
| 19 | Shuichiro Katsumura | 22 | Shooto | 20 |
| 21 | Zack Makovsky | 18 | Bellator | 21 |
| 22 | Abel Cullum | 17 | KOTC | 22 |
| 23 | Darren Uyenoyama | 16 | Shooto | 23 |
| 24 | Yoshiro Maeda | 12 | DEEP | 25 |
| 25 | Takafumi Otsuka | 11 | DEEP | 26 |
Rankings compiled by Richard Wade.
#1 Dominick Cruz beat #4 Scott Jorgensen soundly at WEC 53 but it made no impact on the rankings. That's what happens when the outcome is expected.
No word on who's next for Cruz with former WEC featherweight champ #6 Urijah Faber facing former BW champ #15 Eddie Wineland at UFC 128. That presumably kills the possibility of Faber and Cruz or possibly #5 Miguel Torres coaching the next season of The Ultimate Fighter.
#13 Demetrious Johnson will welcome Norifumi "Kid" Yamamoto to the UFC at UFC 126. If Yamamoto can get past the formidable Johnson, expect him to be on the fast track to title contention despite his currently unranked status.
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.
We are now moving to what JCS of Fight Matrix has described as assumed rankings in an attempt to rank fighters who move between weight classes. This has been the biggest problem with the consensus rankings and we believe this new methodology will rectify that.
Let's take Anderson Silva for instance. 87% (13 of 15) of our panelists have him at Light Heavyweight and 100% (15 of 15) at Middleweight. On the 13 ballots that ranked Silva at 205, we took the average (21.2). We then reduced that number by half the percentage of Light Heavyweight ballots that he was not included on. Say he's not on 30% of them, then we do a 15% penalty on the average that we found in the previous step. That number is then used instead of the usual "normalization number" to provide points from those not ranking the fighter in the weight class in question. This avoids fighters being excessively penalized by confusion about which weight class they belong.
