Historical Ranks – Page 25

The Most Underrated MMA Fighters of All-Time: Part 4

Posted on December 21, 2014 by Jason

#25 – #15: The Most Underrated MMA Fighters of All-Time: Part 1
#14 – #10: The Most Underrated MMA Fighters of All-Time: Part 2
#9 – #5: The Most Underrated MMA Fighters of All-Time: Part 3

If you missed the first parts, you can visit w/ the links above.

#4 – Chad Mendes (Rep Avg: #121.3 | Fight Matrix: #48)

Mendes is taking the Jon Fitch road, but at 145. Practically glued to the Top 5, tons of top-quality fights and wins while fighting for the UFC, but just can’t get over the hump to win the gold. Having him outside of the Top 100 is absolutely ridiculous.

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The Most Underrated MMA Fighters of All-Time: Part 3

Posted on December 20, 2014 by Jason

#25 – #15: The Most Underrated MMA Fighters of All-Time: Part 1
#14 – #10: The Most Underrated MMA Fighters of All-Time: Part 2

If you missed the first parts, you can visit w/ the links above.

#9 – #5

#9 – Mamoru Yamaguchi (Rep Avg: #120 | Fight Matrix: #70)

Small man bias in full effect here — Yamaguchi is a part of the three-headed Japanese dragon that has ruled the All-Time MMA Rankings at Flyweight, here on Fight Matrix. For us, DJ is set to high jump over this tandem in the near future, but he apparently already had sometime ago for mostly everyone else. The “pick and choose” process is very strange when it comes to acknowledging MMA success in the early years.

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The Most Underrated MMA Fighters of All-Time: Part 2

Posted on December 19, 2014 by Jason

#25 – #15: The Most Underrated MMA Fighters of All-Time: Part 1

If you missed the first part, you can visit it w/ the link above. It has all of the details about how this list came to be.

As I complete the list, I can’t help but think of how great this series could have been and how sad it is that reasonable lists like this are practically non-existent. If you come across any, please let me know.

#14 – #10

#14 – Miguel Torres (Rep Avg: #65 | Fight Matrix: #39)

Torres is still our Top Bantamweight of All-Time. With Barao recently losing and Cruz taking all the time off, Torres should hold this position for a little longer.

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The Most Underrated MMA Fighters of All-Time: Part 1

Posted on December 18, 2014 by Jason

For those of you who do not know, in addition to our Current MMA Rankings, we also feature an All-Time MMA Rankings that is updated every month (usually on the 2nd).

In an effort to mix it up heading into the new year, I’ve decided to compare our All-Time Absolute list to an average of a few other lists that I’ve found on the Internet, in order to bring attention to fighters who I believe are the most underrated in the history of MMA.

I feel an analysis of underrated fighters is more objective than an analysis of overrated fighters, as many fighters are given lofty positions in subjective lists due to an over-friendliness bestowed upon pioneer fighters, especially those who were under-sized. As you probably know, our lists are based on actual results and it goes without saying that being the #1 Welterweight in 2014 means much more than being the #1 Welterweight in 2004 (for example).

Not surprisingly, it was tough to find (seemingly) reputable lists:

Crowd-sourcing Representative: Tapology Top 100 (2014-12-18)

“Peak” Mathematical Representative: MMA-ELO Top 25 (2014-11-01)

“Cumulative” Mathematical Representative: Sports-Ratings Top 250 (2014-03-31)

I would have loved to have added an “Expert” representative, but I could not find one readily available.

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All-Time MMA Rankings Updated (12-02-2014)

Posted on December 2, 2014 by Jason

All-Time Bantamweight Career Rankings Progression

Posted on August 27, 2014 by Jason

Bantamweight All-Time Rankings

With a major Bantamweight fight happening on Saturday, I thought it’d be an opportune time to post a graphical representation of the Bantamweight All-Time rankings and their progression since late 2011.

All fighters listed were at one point or another, in the Top 10 since late 2011. The rank next to their name represents their current All-Time ranking in the Bantamweight division.

As you can see, Barao has had a meteoric rise toward #1 Torres, but Dillashaw’s victory over him temporarily deterred him from gaining the top position.

All-Time MMA Rankings: The Best Fighters Who Never Fought in Japan or USA

Posted on May 13, 2014 by Jason

In case you didn’t know, we feature career-long All-Time MMA Rankings. Using monthly snapshots as fuel (that we refresh every month), we derive Top 25s for each division, Women and Absolute. We also have a Peak Divisional Dominance list, but this is quite different as it looks at absolute peak, relative to the state of the division at that sliver of time.

We stop each list at Top 25, partially because every list has to stop somewhere, but mostly because we really don’t want to get into arguments as to why #74 is ranked higher than #76 — the list can get quite noisy once you get beyond the Top 25…. where things become really tight.

Two weeks ago, we took a look at the highest ranking fighters of all-time who never fought in the UFC, WEC, or any organization eventually acquired by ZUFFA. In this list, we take a look at fighters who never fought in a pro, non-exhibition match in Japan or the USA. We had to dig awfully low for this.

Fighters are listed with their career records and all-time rankings:

5. Maxim Tarasov (18-4 | Light Heavy: #51 | Absolute: #505)

Behind Jimmo by a hair, at both Absolute and Light Heavyweight, Tarasov can be considered sort of a pioneer at 205. We have three more wins for him than Sherdog does, but who knows if they actually happened and under what ruleset.

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All-Time MMA Rankings: The Best Non-ZUFFA Fighters in History

Posted on May 2, 2014 by Jason

In any case, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at the 5 highest-ranking Absolute fighters that never fought in the UFC or any organization that ZUFFA has acquired… and here we go.

Fighters are listed with their career records and all-time rankings:

5. Bibiano Fernandes (16-3 | Bantam: #8 | Feather: #23 | Absolute: #82)

Quite possibly the best fighter in recent history steering clear of the states along with Shinya Aoki, Fernandes has actually made the Top 25 in two divisions within our All-Time MMA Rankings. As these have traditionally been weaker divisions, he is far from the Top 25 within the Absolute list.

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All-Time MMA Rankings Updated (05-02-2014)

Posted on May 2, 2014 by Jason

Hendricks has a long way to catch GSP: All-Time Ranking History

Posted on March 13, 2014 by Jason

A follow-up to a previous post on the Welterweight All-Time Picture.

Welterweight All-Time

Zoom in on the Fitch ceiling and below.

First, some general info:

Everyone’s overall trend is upward in the chart due to increased quality of data, amongst other things. Essentially, the “value” of a point decreased.
Some of the “noise” caused by test runs were cleaned up from the previous post.
Current Welterweight All-Time rank is listed next to the fighter names.
All fighters listed have been in the Top 10 at Welterweight since we started storing the career rankings.
Only Top 10 point totals are displayed for the listed fighters.
Fighters with dotted data lines are no longer in the Top 10.
I’ve often commented to readers that effects on the list are not entirely immediate. There is usually some immediate effect to results, but as you can see in the graph, the term “rolling average” is probably a much more accurate way to explain the movement. The methodology was created in such a way for many reasons.
Kiuma Kunioku saw his all-time point eligibility change from Welterweight to Middleweight for his early Pancrase accomplishments. This was due to some minor division re-adjustment and how we considered those pioneer day results. The other “dotted line” fighters were simply surpassed.

Pound-for-Pound added to Historical & Archived Rankings

Posted on December 3, 2013 by Oleg

Our newest addition, Pound-for-Pound MMA rankings, is now available in the Generated Historical Rankings and Published Ranking Snapshots (starting with October 2013 issue).

If you’re historically inclined, you can now look up what the Pound-for-Pound Top 15 would have looked like in early 2005, or see what it actually looked like last month!

All-Time Welterweight Rankings – Behind the Scenes Timeline

Posted on November 13, 2012 by Jason

With the big Welterweight Championship fight approaching, I thought I would do a repeat of our Light Heavyweight analysis from yesterday, but for the Welterweight division.

The noise and fluctuations in this division are minimal in comparison. Furthermore, the gaps seen in this list between #2-#3, and #3-#4 are quite comical.

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MMA All-Time Rankings Updated: 7/2/2012

Posted on July 2, 2012 by Jason

All-Time MMA Rankings Updated: 2/3/2012

Posted on February 3, 2012 by Jason

Notable Info

With Jose Aldo’s latest victory, he takes a big leap from #21 to #16 in the Absolute rankings. He is also much closer to taking the #1 spot at Featherweight.
Chael Sonnen’s latest victory inches him past Paulo Filho to enter the Top 5 All-Time Middleweight list.
Ben Henderson finally breaks into the Top 25 at Lightweight, filling the last position on the list.
Megumi Fujii moves past Tara LaRosa and Yuka Tsuji, to claim the #1 Women’s position. Fujii’s continued elite position coupled with LaRosa’s lack of tough opposition caused this shift, though the three are still very close.

All-Time MMA Rankings Updated

Posted on January 2, 2012 by Jason