| Rank | Fighter | % | Promotion | Last Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Georges St. Pierre | 100 | UFC | 1 |
| 2 | Jon Fitch | 96 | UFC | 2 |
| 3 | Jake Shields | 89 | UFC | 3 |
| 4 | Josh Koscheck | 86 | UFC | 4 |
| 5 | Thiago Alves | 85 | UFC | 5 |
| 6 | Carlos Condit | 75 | UFC | 6 |
| 7 | Martin Kampmann | 73 | UFC | 7 |
| 7 | Nick Diaz | 73 | Strikeforce | 8 |
| 9 | B.J. Penn | 62 | UFC | 9 |
| 10 | Paul Daley | 51 | Strikeforce | 10 |
| 11 | Dan Hardy | 46 | UFC | 12 |
| 12 | Matt Hughes | 42 | UFC | 11 |
| 13 | Diego Sanchez | 41 | UFC | 13 |
| 14 | Chris Lytle | 36 | UFC | 14 |
| 15 | Paulo Thiago | 32 | UFC | 15 |
| 16 | Mike Pyle | 31 | UFC | 16 |
| 17 | Jay Hieron | 30 | Bellator | 17 |
| 18 | Ben Askren | 27 | Bellator | 18 |
| 19 | Mike Swick | 23 | UFC | 19 |
| 20 | John Hathaway | 20 | UFC | 20 |
| 21 | Dong Hyun Kim | 20 | UFC | 26 |
| 22 | Matt Serra | 17 | UFC | 21 |
| 23 | Jake Ellenberger | 16 | UFC | 22 |
| 24 | Rick Story | 16 | UFC | 23 |
| 25 | Anthony Johnson | 13 | UFC | 25 |
Rankings compiled by Richard Wade.
#1 Georges St Pierre will face #3 Jake Shields at UFC 129. If he wins, Dana White may very well declare that GSP has cleaned out the division and go ahead and book the long awaited GSP vs Anderson Silva bout.
This will be a sore disappointment to the winner of UFC 127's fight between #2 Jon Fitch and #9 B.J. Penn. On the other hand if GSP leaves the division, the winner of Fitch-Penn will be in the catbird seat to take the belt.
No word on what's next for #4 Josh Koscheck, besides the extended lay off for injuries suffered at the hands of GSP at UFC 124.
#5 Thiago Alves will likely face #24 Rick Story next, possibly in May.
#6 Carlos Condit will take on #14 Chris Lytle at UFC 127. The winner will be in the title hunt.
#7 Martin Kampmann will get #13 Diego Sanchez at UFC on Versus 3.
The other #7 Nick Diaz defends his Strikeforce welterweight belt this Saturday against the unranked but legendary Evangelista "Cyborg" Santos. That should be an entertaining fight but says alot about how thin Strikeforce's welterweight division is.
#10 Paul Daley, Strikeforce's other top 10 welterweight, will risk his title shot against the winner of Diaz-Santos by fighting DEEP champ Yuya Shirai in England at BAMMA 5 in February.
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.
