In extreme obscurity, a slimmed down Ricco Rodriguez fought an equally in-shape Travis Fulton on Saturday.  Rodriguez was able to seal the deal with a knockout of Fulton.  This will move Ricco up a few spots, while Fulton will drop outside of the Top 100, as the conqueror of tomato cans, yet again finds himself on the losing end against an opponent with name value.

Notable Info

• The effect on fighters’ points after having moved divisions has been amplified from a reciprocal power of 1.75 to 2.5.

Fight Outcomes

[#6] Josh Bryant W-UD(3) [#9] Kris McCray

New Rankings After Episode 5 Results

1. Kyle Noke

2. Brad Tavares

3. Court McGee

4. Joe Henle

5. Josh Bryant (+1)

6. Rich Attonito (-1)

7. Nick Ring

8. Kyacey Uscola*

9. Jim Hammortree* (+1)

10. Seth Bacyznski (+1)

11. Jamie Yager (+1)

12. Kris McCray* (-3)

13. Charles Blanchard*

14. Clayton McKinney*

Note: We are going to keep all active 14 fighters ranked due to “wildcard” possibilities.  Fighters who have lost are tagged with an asterisk.

One of the biggest issues that onlookers have with the FightMatrix ranking system is how we initially rank fighters that move divisions.

Due to the nature of the point-based system, we cannot take away all of a fighter’s point balance and start them unranked, simply because they moved divisions.  If this was the case, the opponents who beat them would gain nothing for doing so, and in all but the most extreme cases, this would be 100% incorrect.  Fighters outside of the big organizations shift divisions all of the time, so its not as if a new division means its a new sport with new rules or even an entirely new crop of fighters.

We do reduce the point balances of fighters who move up in division, in order to represent the increased difficulty in fighting “bigger” fighters in more proven weight divisions.  This is done at a rate of approximately 12-15% per division.  I provided a range here, because some divisional jumps differ in size and we do take that into account.  Note: This isn’t something we’ve always done.  It was always planned, but we did not have enough divisional information until late 2009.

In order to make this work, we must do the inverse when a fighter moves down in division.  This means a fighter’s points will actually increase, as they are moving into a division with smaller fighters.  Current examples of this are Wanderlei Silva (#4 MW), and Wagnney Fabiano (#5 BW).  Even if these fighters have only fought once in their latest tenure (or career) at the lower division, please understand that for the most part, their new divisional ratings should be considered as projection unless its a “rating-solidifying” result (big win, big loss, draw against equal-rated).  This downward move is more controversial than the upward move, especially when a fighter makes a drastic weight cut that ultimately ends up being a bad idea.

When we debut our comprehensive historical month-by-month and all-time divisional rankings (ETA: Unknown), we’ll have enough data around the divisional moves to provide modified information as to whether or not the moves should have been compensated for.

Fight Outcomes

[#11] Rich Attonito W-DQ(1) [#5] Kyacey Uscola

[#14] Jamie Yager W-TKO(1) [#8] Charles Blanchard

New Rankings After Episode 4 Results

1. Kyle Noke

2. Brad Tavares

3. Court McGee

4. Joe Henle

5. Rich Attonito (+6)

6. Josh Bryant

7. Nick Ring

8. Kyacey Uscola* (-3)

9. Kris McCray

10. Jim Hammortree*

11. Seth Bacyznski (+1)

12. Jamie Yager (+2)

13. Charles Blanchard* (-5)

14. Clayton McKinney* (-1)

Note: We are going to keep all active 14 fighters ranked due to “wildcard” possibilities.  Fighters who have lost are tagged with an asterisk.

FightMatrix Fun Fact

It’s hard to believe, but the Division Dominance List recently turned two years old.  3 fighters, Georges St. Pierre, Fedor Emelianenko, and Anderson Silva, have been ranked in every issue since its inception.  Ironically, these 3 occupy the top 3 spots on the current list.

Who has your pick on being the first to drop out of the Top 10?

Fight Outcome

[#5] Brad Tavares W-UD(3) [#10] Jim Hammortree

New Rankings After Episode 3 Results

1. Kyle Noke

2. Brad Tavares (+3)

3. Court McGee

4. Joe Henle

5. Kyacey Uscola (+1)

6. Josh Bryant (+1)

7. Nick Ring (+1)

8. Charles Blanchard (+1)

9. Kris McCray (+2)

10. Jim Hammortree*

11. Rich Attonito (+1)

12. Seth Bacyznski (NEW)

13. Clayton McKinney*

14. Jamie Yager

Brad Tavares gains 3 spots, up to #2.  Hammortree remains at #10.  Chris Camozzi was dropped from the rankings due to an injury.  Seth Baczynski enters at #12.

Note: We are going to keep all active 14 fighters ranked due to “wildcard” possibilities.  Fighters who have lost are tagged with an asterisk.

UFC Middleweight Championship
[#1] Anderson Silva vs. [#8] Demian Maia

UFC Lightweight Championship
[#1] B.J. Penn vs. [#7] Frankie Edgar

Welterweight
[#10] Matt Hughes vs. [*] Renzo Gracie

Lightweight
[#31] Terry Etim vs. [#87] Rafael dos Anjos

Middleweight
[#30] Kendall Grove vs. [#60] Mark Munoz

Light Heavyweight
[#29] Phil Davis vs. [#31] Alexander Gustafsson

Lightweight
[#115 WW] Paul Taylor vs. [#126] John Gunderson

Welterweight
[#31] Rick Story vs. [#107] Nick Osipczak

Welterweight
[#40] Brad Blackburn vs. [#83] DaMarques Johnson

Lightweight
[#95] Matt Veach vs. [#166] Paul Kelly

Heavyweight
[#118] Mostapha Al-Turk vs. [#164] Jon Madsen

Although we’ve only been posting rankings since (outside of some beta testing) January 2008, Fedor would’ve likely been the #1 ranked heavyweight since his win over Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira on 12/31/04, over 5 years ago. He followed that up with some big wins, but has been relatively inactive since the beginning of 2008, only having fought three times. His inability to come to an agreement with the UFC has limited him to fighting the best heavyweights not in the organization, which has stymied his potential point total. As a result, other top heavyweights are slowly creeping toward #1, and a win over Werdum won’t do much to hold them off.

Should Brock Lesnar pull off a dominant victory against Shane Carwin in their title fight, he will likely overtake Fedor for the top heavyweight position.   Should Carwin win, Fedor will likely stay at #1, with Carwin at #2, and Lesnar at #3 — unless a fight such as Velasquez/dos Santos comes off, which would cause more shuffling at the top.

Fight Outcome

[#1] Kyle Noke W-SUB(1) [#13] Clayton McKinney

New Rankings After Episode 2 Results

1. Kyle Noke

2. Chris Camozzi

3. Court McGee

4. Joe Henle

5. Brad Tavares

6. Kyacey Uscola

7. Josh Bryant

8. Nick Ring

9. Charles Blanchard

10. Jim Hammortree

11. Kris McCray

12. Rich Attonito

13. Clayton McKinney*

14. Jamie Yager

Rankings remain unchanged.

Note: We are going to keep all original 14 fighters ranked due to “wildcard” possibilities.  Fighters who have lost are tagged with an asterisk.

We’ve added a new feature in this release: the ability to filter all divisional rankings by country and organization.

For example, here’s the UFC’s heavyweight division at a glance:

http://www.fightmatrix.com/mma-ranks/heavyweight-265-lbs/?OrgFilter=UFC

or, a list of all currently ranked Japanese flyweights:

http://www.fightmatrix.com/mma-ranks/flyweight/?NatFilter=JP

Just select an organization and/or country in the “Last Fought In” and “Country” dropdown lists that appear at the top of the divisional rankings, and watch a cross-section of that division. 

Keep in mind that this data is not always 100% accurate: sometimes we may have a fighter’s nationality wrong in our database, or a fighter may appear on the org that he last fought in long after it becomes known that he is no longer with the organization (for example, Dan Henderson and UFC/Strikeforce).  If you notice any errors, or have suggestion on how to further improve this feature, please let us know in our forums!

Notable Info

• We did some serious database maintenance in the past week to increase overall accuracy of database bout history.  As a result, there will be some moderate fluctuations throughout the rankings.