UFC Heavyweight Championship
[#1] Brock Lesnar vs. [#4] Shane Carwin

Middleweight
[#13] Yoshihiro Akiyama vs. [#25] Chris Leben

Welterweight
[#23] Chris Lytle vs. [#68] Matt Brown

Light Heavyweight
[#36] Krzysztof Soszynski vs. [#83] Stephan Bonnar

Lightweight
[#10] George Sotiropoulos vs. [#14] Kurt Pellegrino

Heavyweight
[#36] Chris Tuchscherer vs. [#131] Brendan Schaub

Light Heavyweight
[#73] Seth Petruzelli vs. [#77] Ricardo Romero

Middleweight
[#47] Kendall Grove vs. [#101] Goran Reljic

Middleweight
[#41] Gerald Harris vs. [#83] Dave Branch

Welterweight
[#66] Forrest Petz vs. [#145] Daniel Roberts

Heavyweight
[#101] Jon Madsen vs. [#144] Karlos Vemola

Notable Info

• The unthinkable has happened.  Werdum moves up to #2, while Fedor drops to #3.
• There is currently a display bug in the Quality Performance %.  The numbers listed are incorrect and will be fixed upon the next update.

It’s been a while since we had a post that was strictly based on analysis, so I thought it was a good time to provide one.  I decided to take a look at average opponent strength between 2007 and 2009.  We’ll look at which fighters have had the best average opponent strength, and although I wanted to also post who had the worst, it was really hard to filter the list in a way that did not only contain obscure fighters or those who just now reached their lofty ranking.  Before consuming the lists, please consider the following qualifiers and notes:

• Fighters must have had at least four qualifying fights between 1/1/2007 and 12/31/2009, an average of one fight per nine months. I did not want to bring this to the current day due to the next point.
• The opponents’ current FightMatrix division dominance ratings are considered, not their pre-bout ratings or regular ratings.  I wanted to use the current division normalized status of the opponents to show what they’ve become, not what they were, or what the rating system thought they were.  So, to limit the direct effect of points gained by the opponents who beat the listed fighters, I stopped the date range short of this year.
• No contests are excluded as are female fighters.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s take a look at the list.

Top 10

1. Forrest Griffin

2. Matt Hughes

3. Chuck Liddell

Keep Reading

Notable Info

• A ton of fights and some data maintenance lead to quite a few changes in the rankings this week.

Further bolstering our All-Time rankings is the Peak Division Dominance list.  This list works nearly identically to the current list, in that it ranks fighters based on their peak dominance in a respective division.  The all-time version takes each fighter’s best dominance rating throughout their career, then ranks them in order.  One difference about the all-time version is that the fighter must have been established in the division before being eligible for the list.

The monthly window is small, but this dominance list is about an absolute peak, not an extended period.  Most of the names in the list you’ll expect, and a few you won’t.  Be sure to hover over the fighters’ names to view the division and month/year that they were most dominant.  And also remember, there is more to division dominance than just the fighter’s body of work.  The divisional strength is also considered as well.

Click here to view the all-time career MMA rankings page

Light Heavyweight
[#12] Rich Franklin vs. [#20] Chuck Liddell

Heavyweight
[#18] Mirko Filipovic vs. [#48] Pat Barry

Welterweight
[#7] Paulo Thiago vs. [#21] Martin Kampmann

Heavyweight
[#26] Gilbert Yvel vs. [#33] Ben Rothwell

Welterweight
[#17] Carlos Condit vs. [#31] Rory MacDonald

Lightweight
[#12] Tyson Griffin vs. [#30] Evan Dunham

Lightweight
[#75] Matt Wiman vs. [#107] Mac Danzig

Middleweight
[#53 LHW] David Loiseau vs. [#129] Mario Miranda

Welterweight
[#307] James Wilks vs. [#537] Peter Sobotta

Welterweight
[#66] Claude Patrick vs. [#317] Ricardo Funch

Welterweight
[#45] Mike Pyle vs. [#63] Jesse Lennox

NOTE: This is the first event in quite some time where there have been 3 fighters outside of our current rankings (Wilks, Sobotta, and Funch).

We have just posted our initial release of the computerized All-Time MMA Rankings.  These rankings consider fighters’ entire careers by division and also on an overall level.  Please note, these are not peak dominance rankings.

There are some very important differences between the all-time rankings and the current rankings, so please read the information provided at the top of the page.

Click here to view the all-time career MMA rankings page

Light Heavyweight
[#3] Rashad Evans vs. [#4] Quinton Jackson

Middleweight
[#15] Michael Bisping vs. [#32] Dan Miller

Heavyweight
[#30] Mike Russow vs. [#38] Todd Duffee

Light Heavyweight
[#9] Antonio Rogerio Nogueira vs. [#41] Jason Brilz

Welterweight
[#8 LW] Diego Sanchez vs. [#52] John Hathaway

Welterweight
[#28] Dong Hyun Kim vs. [#31] Amir Sadollah

Lightweight
[#138] Efrain Escudero vs. [#189] Dan Lauzon

Lightweight
[#51] Melvin Guillard vs. [#160] Waylon Lowe

Light Heavyweight
[#18] Luis Arthur Cane vs. [#38] Cyrille Diabate

Lightweight
[#147] Aaron Riley vs. [#256] Joe Brammer

Middleweight
[#108] Jesse Forbes vs. [#113] Ryan Jensen

UPDATE:  We got some late results in, so we’re refreshing the rankings at about 5:15 ET.

We’re tweaking some processes and making quite a few improvements to the database, so we decided to release an intermediate mid-week update.