When taking a look at all of the major ranking sites, there is one fighter ranked very highly by the others, whom we are pretty harsh on — and that is Michael Bisping.
On Sherdog’s most recent ranking, he is ranked #4 in the Middleweight division. They are not alone, as the USA Today meta-rankings (of which we are a part of) have him just one notch lower, at #5. On FightMatrix, he is currently at #14.
Now, I’m not just defending the system here — I truly believe that these sites are overrating Michael Bisping. Let’s take a look at his performances from the past 3.5 years and the current ranking of those opponents.
2012-01-28: L[UD] vs. [#2MW] Chael Sonnen
2011-12-03: W[TKO] vs. [#88MW] Jason Miller
2011-02-27: W[TKO] vs. [#46MW] Jorge Rivera — Listed rank, if he had not retired.
2010-10-06: W[UD] vs. [#132WW] Yoshihiro Akiyama
2010-05-29: W[UD] vs. [#42WW] Dan Miller
2010-02-09: L[UD] vs. [#23MW] Wanderlei Silva
2009-11-14: W[TKO] vs. [#88MW] Denis Kang
2009-07-11: L[KO] vs. [#2LHW] Dan Henderson
You have to put some confidence in our rankings for the purpose of this list. Now in all fairness, when analyzing the wins, nearly all of the fighters were ranked higher prior to Bisping beating them. This is the only reason that he’s as high as #14 here, but this also goes to show you that his worth is overrated, as not a single one has stayed in the division AND improved their rank. In fact, two of them have retired (Rivera and Miller). In fact, when considering the losses as well, you could certainly argue that Henderson is the only one on the list to improve his status since fighting Bisping — and we all know how that fight went.
I can only presume that Bisping holds such a lofty rating due to his visibility and also due to his competitive fight with Sonnen, which ultimately, went down as a loss. I think this begs the question, how much can a competitive three-round unanimous decision loss do for your ranking?
One fighter you don’t even see on the Sherdog list until you get to the “other contenders” section, is Hector Lombard (FightMatrix #6). He’s #11 on the USA Today rankings. So for the sake of argument, we’ll say that the majority have Lombard seven spots ahead of Bisping, while we have him eight spots ahead of Bisping. Let’s take a look at his past 3.5 years.
2011-11-19: W[TKO] vs. [#40LHW] Trevor Prangley — 195lb Fight
2011-09-03: W[SUB] vs. [#84WW] Jesse Taylor
2011-05-14: W[KO] vs. [#77MW] Falaniko Vitale
2011-03-25: W[TKO] vs. [#79MW] Joe Doerksen
2010-10-28: W[UD] vs. [#18MW] Alexander Shlemenko
2010-08-12: W[KO] vs. [#75MW] Herbert Goodman
2010-05-13: W[KO] vs. [#41MW] Jay Silva — 191lb Fight
2010-03-12: W[TKO] vs. [*] Art Santore
2010-02-04: W[UD] vs. [*] Joey Gorczynski
2009-11-20: W[SUB] vs. [#150MW] Kalib Starnes
2009-06-19: W[TKO] vs. [#103MW] Jared Hess
2009-05-29: W[TKO] vs. [*] James Damien Stelly
2009-04-17: W[KO] vs. [*] Virgil Lozano
2009-02-20: W[TKO] vs. [*] Ron Verdadero
First off, in this case, the asterisks represent fighters who have gone inactive. One thing you’ll notice in this list, is that Lombard had no losses and many more wins in the same time period. Lombard did not have access to the UFC competition, but I think you will notice that his recent wins are comparable to Bisping’s at least in rank value. Fighters like Goodman, Doerksen and especially Shlemenko have remained viable.
So, you tell us. What do you think?
[poll id=”6″]
[poll id=”7″]
[poll id=”8″]