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.

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.

Keep Reading

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.

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.

Keep Reading

We’re on a roll with new features today – thanks forum member kedbecker for this suggestion!

In our fighter search, you can now quickly look up the highest a fighter has been ever ranked in our generated historical ranking sets. For example, if you search for ‘Sakuraba’ you can quickly see the highest ranking for one of MMA’s pioneers: Kazushi Sakuraba was ranked #1 Middleweight in October of 1998 (in case of ties, the heaviest weight class and the most recent ranking set are shown).

First, a run-down of the particulars:

• Inception of the championship occured on 10/14/1993, the first “top contender” match-up that took place within this division.
• Vacancies after inactivity periods were fulfilled by the next “top contender” match.  Absence of such, was not a problem at Heavyweight.

Your current lineal Heavyweight champion is Alistair Overeem

The full history is below. Note, the colored backgrounds indicate a title change.

MMA Heavyweight Lineal Championship History

Keep Reading

• Due to potential metric conversion issues and weight class changes, a limit of 206 pounds is observed for this list.
• Inception of the championship occurred on 12/21/1997.  The late start was due to the lack of guidance by an organization, with no semblance of matchmaking.  Before the UFC, the Light Heavyweight division was used a “stop gap” between Middleweight and Heavyweight.
• Only one period of inactivity was seen in this lineage.

Keep Reading