Just a quick comment regarding this topic. Before reading on, please understand that with each ranking update, we re-analyze the entire database bout history from the earliest, to the most recent. This allows us to take advantage of data improvements, past and present.
After compiling some recently excavated Brazilian fights from the past several years, courtesy of Sherdog, Jussier “Formiga” da Silva rose back up to #1 in the Flyweight division. Before his win against Kojima, we thought he was 2-0 and very few had even heard of him. He sure wasn’t in our Top 25 (now Top 50) Flyweight rankings. Not even close.
Now, we believe he was 5-0 prior to that fight, and if we were to generate pre-fight rankings for their July 2009 fight with the data we currently have, Formiga would be respectably ranked at #11 in the division.
Supposedly, there are still two or three wins missing from his record. Just imagine how many wins are missing from his opponents’ records, and their opponents’ records? Just one more thing to consider when viewing our rankings.