Notable Info

• Bouts added to database w/ recent shows from PURECOMBAT, Sengoku, CCFC, M-1, Strike and Submit, and some minor organizations.
• Added some old bouts from minor organizations.

Though Anderson Silva posted a somewhat lackadaisical performance in an anticlimactic victory over Patrick Cote at UFC 90, he reached an important milestone in his UFC career: eight consecutive wins in UFC bouts, matching the record first set by Royce Gracie and recently repeated by Jon Fitch.  Silva also won his fifth championship bout, making for four consecutive title defenses.   Every single one of Silva’s UFC fights has been the main even of the night, and Patrick Cote is the only opponent to make it into the third round.

Silva has five fights remaining on his UFC contract, and hinted at an early retirement after the contract is over.  Should he win all five bouts, he will have an unprecedented thirteen consecutive wins inside the Octagon.  His next fight is rumored to be at 205 lbs.

Not far behind Anderson is the welterweight contender Thiago Alves, whose unanimous decision win over Josh Koscheck marked his seventh consecutive UFC victory.  Alves is slated to take on the winner of the upcoming battle between the lightweight champion BJ Penn and his welterweight counterpart Georges St. Pierre.  Either matchup should produce fireworks, and both put the continuation of Thiago’s streak in great jeopardy.

Here are some more interesting UFC records:

Most Wins in the UFC

Most Consecutive Wins in the UFC

Most UFC Bouts

Most UFC Title Wins

Most Consecutive UFC Title Defenses

Most UFC Title Bouts

Notable Info

• Bouts added to database w/ recent shows from UFC, KOTC, Pancrase, DEEP, Shooto, Superior Challenge, RAW Combat, and some minor organizations.
• Added some old bouts from minor organizations.

UFC Middleweight Championship
[#1] Anderson Silva vs. [#16] Patrick Cote

Welterweight
[#2] Thiago Alves vs. [#6] Josh Koscheck

Heavyweight
[#4] Fabricio Werdum vs. [#225] Junior dos Santos

Lightweight
[#8] Tyson Griffin vs. [#12] Sean Sherk

Lightweight
[#20] Gray Maynard vs. [#31] Rich Clementi

Middleweight
[#14] Thales Leites vs. [#51] Drew McFedries

Lightweight
[#29] Spencer Fisher vs. [#116] Shannon Gugerty

Middleweight
[#32] Dan Miller vs. [#46] Matt Horwich

Lightweight
[#33] Marcus Aurelio vs. [#39] Hermes Franca

Welterweight
[#29] Josh Burkman vs. [#300] Pete Sell

Ranking Note: Gray font represents an approximate ranking. An asterisk represents a fighter who is ranked, but too low for an approximation. These two scenarios will clear up slightly as we move forward. “NR” means the fighter is not ranked, due to inactivity, or due to a rating that is at or below the default starter rating.

Last week, I examined the progress of the middleweight fighters who participated in The Ultimate Fighter 4.  Lets now take a look at the welterweights of Season 4.

The welterweights were a very experienced group of fighters, with a combined record of 139-62-13 prior to the show.  Two of the welterweights – Matt Serra and Rich Clementi – took charge of their respective teams, becoming the unofficial team captains.  Even though Serra ended up winning the entire Season 4 tournament while Clementi was eliminated in the first round, today they are still the highest ranked fighters of the Season 4 welterweight group. 

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Notable Info

• Bouts added to database w/ recent shows from UFC, KOTC, and some minor organizations.
• Added some old bouts from minor organizations.

After the third season of ‘The Ultimate Fighter’ reality series showed a significant drop-off in talent level from the previous two seasons, UFC decided to switch things up for Season 4.  Instead of having sixteen up-and-coming MMA fighters compete for a chance to fight in the UFC, Season 4 featured sixteen veterans of the sport competing at a shot at the UFC title in the middleweight and welterweight divisions.  Though all of the featured fighters have competed in the Octagon in the past, most of them had below .500 records in the UFC and have never come close to winning a title.  Season 4 offered these fighters another chance to earn the gold, and was dubbed ‘the comeback season’.

Season 4 did not focus as heavily on the coaches as the previous seasons: instead of having two coaches mentoring the opposing teams, the show featured a number of UFC fighters and trainers who were made available to all contenders.  Though the fight teams did not have an official leader, welterweights Matt Serra and Rich Clementi emerged as de-facto captains of their teams. I will take a look at the middleweights first, and examine the welterweights next week.

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Notable Info

• Bouts added to database w/ recent shows from EliteXC, Warriors Collide, UWC, SuperFights, and some other minor promotions.
• Added some old bouts from minor circuits.

Notable Info

• Bouts added to database w/ recent shows from EliteXC, Shooto, Cage Gladiators, TKO, Freestyle Cage, and others.
• Approximately 850 “old” bouts added to the database!

Up until this point, we’ve only taken a look at UFC cards.  However, I wanted to do a bit of a competitiveness study while outlining the EliteXC card.

When averaging the pre-fight ranking of the favorite and underdog for each match, we get these average match-ups for the past two UFC cards and the 10/4 EliteXC card:

UFC 88: [#27] vs. [#65]

UFC Fight Night 9/17: [#43] vs. [#107]

EliteXC 10/4: [#166] vs. [#254]

While calculating, it was going well for EliteXC, especially since they have women’s matches, where its harder to draw  abysmally ranked competitors.  Same goes for the lightest male divisions.  However, I hadn’t noticed that there are debuting fighters on the card, which absolutely trashed the average rankings, since I had to use the lowest rank possible to average with.

If you only take the top 7 matches (by average ranking) of each card, you get the following results:

UFC 88: [#26] vs. [#47]

UFC Fight Night 9/17: [#39] vs. [#81]

EliteXC 10/4: [#45] vs. [#90]

By using only the 7 most competitive matches (just enough to exclude the debuting fighters), you get a more accurate picture… or do you?  It’s awful sad that the EliteXC “main event” falls well below this adjusted average.

Elite XC 10/4

Heavyweight
[#67] Kimbo Slice vs. [#205] Ken Shamrock

Welterweight
[#5] Jake Shields vs. [#23] Paul Daley

Heavyweight
[#5] Andrei Arlovski vs. [#18] Roy Nelson

Women (Open)
[#9] Gina Carano vs. [#43] Kelly Kobald

Middleweight
[#19] Murilo Rua vs. [#54] Benji Radach

Women (Open)
[#17] Cristiane Santos vs. [#39] Yoko Takahashi

Lightweight
[#157] James Edson Berto vs. [#260] Conor Heun

Light Heavyweight
[#79] Aaron Rosa vs. [#80] Seth Petruzelli

Welterweight
[#290] Lorenzo Borgomeo vs. [NR] Mickey Gomez

Welterweight
[NR] Jorge Bouchat vs. [NR] Nicolae Cury

Bantamweight
[NR] David Gomez vs. [NR] Brett Jackowski

Ranking Note: Gray font represents an approximate ranking. An asterisk represents a fighter who is ranked, but too low for an approximation. These two scenarios will clear up slightly as we move forward. “NR” means the fighter is not ranked, due to inactivity, or due to a rating that is at or below the default starter rating.

Notable Info

• Bouts added to database from recent shows such as EliteXC, Shooto, GCM, M-1, PalaceFC, Sengoku, and some minor organizations.
• Approximately 400 “old” bouts added to the database. (Where do these things keep hiding?)

There were quite a few changes of the guard this week, especially within the lightest divisions.

Featherweight sees two GCM fighters enter the Top 10, while Wilson Reis established himself as a Top 5 Bantamweight.  At Flyweight, former Top 3 stalwart Yasuhiro Urushitani was finally defeated and sees himself dropped to #5.

Notable Info

• Rankings updated with effects from shows in the past week including DREAM, WCF, ECC, Strike Force, NAAFS, Cage Rage, SportFight, Caged Combat, and others.
• Historical shows added to database.
• Improved handling (bugfix) of losses in early career.

For the past month or so, Sherdog has added a ton of historical bouts, especially those from midwest circuits.  This has caused some fluctuations from week to week.  However, they look to have completed this project, so look for the “random”  fluctuations to be reduced.

Last week, I examined the state of the UFC’s heavyweight division.  Now, lets take a look at the state of the heavyweights in the rest of the world.

Once upon a time, Pride FC was home to the deepest heavyweight division in the sport.  When Zuffa bought out Pride, they failed to pick up many of the pieces, resulting in a very scattered division.  To date, no organization has been able to gather the majority of the heavyweights under one banner. Affliction’s first event featured the top four fighters on this list (three of them former UFC champions), but the subsequent cancellation of their upcoming event put the future of Affliction in question .  And so the heavyweights remain spread out among several organizations, with Dream being the biggest player in the division outside of UFC and Affliction.

[#1] Fedor Emelianenko

MMA Record:  28-1, 1 NC (14-0 Pride FC, 1 NC)

Last bout: Defeated Tim Sylvia by submission (rear naked choke) at Affliction: Banned

Current affiliation: Affliction/M-1 Global

Sambo and Judo master Fedor Emelianenko has been indisputably the top heavyweight in the world for most of this decade, and considered by many to be the best fighter in the world in any weight class.  The last Pride HW champion holds an almost perfect professional record, his only loss a controversial cut stoppage to Tsuyoshi Kohsaka that was later avenged with a brutal beating.  After Pride’s demise, Fedor was not able to come to a deal with the UFC, and fought very infrequently and against questionable competition – until a first round stoppage of former UFC champion Tim Sylvia in his most recent bout.  Rumors of a Emelianenko – Couture dream bout have been circulating for over a year, but with Couture back in the UFC this fight doesn’t look likely to happen any time soon, leaving Andrei Arlovski and Josh Barnett as the best possible opposition for Emelianenko.

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Notable Info

• UFC Fight Night and minor shows from the past 10 days added to the database.
• Missing bouts prior to 10 days ago added to the database.

The next ranking update will be during mid-week, after the DREAM show.

 Lightweight
[#29] Nate Diaz vs. [#35] Josh Neer

Light Heavyweight
[#33] Houston Alexander vs. [#64] Eric Schafer

Lightweight
[#28] Clay Guida vs. [#34] Mac Danzig

Lightweight
[#44] Joe Lauzon vs. [#169] Kyle Bradley

Middleweight
[#46] Ed Herman vs. [#56] Alan Belcher

Middleweight
[#40] Wilson Gouveia vs. [#70] Ryan Jensen

Middleweight
[#29] Drew McFedries vs. [#173] Mike Massenzio

Middleweight
[#64] Alessio Sakara vs. [#138] Joe Vedepo

Middleweight
[#43] Dan Miller vs. [#78] Rob Kimmons

Light Heavyweight
[#74] Jason Brilz vs. [#250] Brad Morris

Ranking Note: Gray font represents an approximate ranking. An asterisk represents a fighter who is ranked, but too low for an approximation. These two scenarios will clear up slightly as we move forward. “NR” means the fighter is not ranked, due to inactivity, or due to a rating that is at or below the default starter rating.