Notable Info

• The Heavyweights are eerily quiet this week, with absolutely no movement in the Top 50.
• Forrest Griffin barely holds onto his Top 4 spot at Light Heavyweight after being blitzed by Anderson Silva.
• The decision in Sakara/Leites creates a bit of a mess in the bottom of the Middleweight top 15. After proving himself as a top 15 fighter with several quality wins, Leites drops two straight and just maybe gets the short end of the stick in this decision. As a result, Sakara now finds himself in the Top 15 at Middleweight.
• BJ Penn reclaims the top spot at Lightweight with a commanding win over Kenny Florian, who fell to #8.
• Brian Bowles pulls off the upset as he stops Miguel Torres in the first round. As a result, Bowles takes the top spot at Bantam, and also rises to #2 in Division Dominance. Perhaps a bit of a stretch, but he’s an undefeated, universally recognized champion who just scored a 1st round stoppage over the best Bantamweight in history. Torres drops to #2 at Bantam, and #9 in Division Dominance.
• Jesse Taitano’s attempt to put Guam on the map has stalled, as he dropped a unanimous decision to Noboru Tahara in an 118 pound match.  Taitano falls out of the Top 15 at Flyweight.

UFC Lightweight Championship
[#2] Kenny Florian vs. [#3-C] BJ Penn
First time since the site’s creation that the UFC champion faced a higher-ranked contender.

Light Heavyweight
[#1 MW] Anderson Silva vs. [#4] Forrest Griffin

Welterweight
[#54] Johny Hendricks vs. [#256 MW] Amir Sadollah

Middleweight
[#31] Ricardo Almeida vs. [#42] Kendall Grove

Lightweight
[#27] Josh Neer vs. [#47] Kurt Pellegrino

Lightweight
[#81] Shane Nelson vs. [#164] Aaron Riley

Welterweight
[#24] John Howard vs. [#55] Tamdan McCrory

Middleweight
[#14] Thales Leites vs. [#58] Alessio Sakara

Welterweight
[#96] Matt Riddle vs. [#500] Dan Cramer

Lightweight
[#425] George Roop vs. [NR] George Sotiropoulos

Welterweight
[#37] Jesse Lennox vs. [#75] Danillo Villefort

Ranking Notes: Dark green 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

• Abel Cullum returns to the Bantamweight division with a successful defense of his KOTC Flyweight (135lb) title.  With this win, he eeked into the Top 10.
• Lightweight gets even more strange as Kitaoka was shocked by Hirota, who will hold the top spot at #1 until there is a victor in the Penn/Florian matchup.  Let’s hope there’s not a draw and that the victor will stay active, and keep winning.
• Ricco Rodriguez increments his win total with a submission victory over John Brown.  Although the win gained Ricco a few points, he’s still outside the Top 50 at Heavyweight.
• Blagoi Ivanov, the man who holds a recent Sambo win over Fedor, jumped into the Top 100 with a split decision victory of Kazuyuki Fujita.

Notable Info

• Ricco Rodriguez suffered a loss to unheralded Mario Rinaldi.  As a result, he finds himself outside the Top 50.
• Marius Zaromskis shocks everyone by taking the DREAM Welterweight Grand Prix.  He moves from #67 to #6 in the division.
• Shinya Aoki returns to the Lightweight division, ranked at #6.  Vitor Ribeiro loses even more relevance and falls to #40.
• The biggest upset of the week happened in the Flyweight division.  Longstanding #1 Flyweight Shinichi Kojima, falls to Jucie Formiga, who was just outside of the Top 25.  Due to Kojima’s dominance and the weakness of the division, Formiga moves into the top spot, while Kojima falls to #2.