Most Respected MMA Rankings

Which MMA Rankings do you guys consider to be the most respected? I believe the MMA Media Poll used to be but it is apparently no longer in service.

Now the most prominent ones seem to be MMARanks.com (although their weight classes are updated at wildly differing times....two or three are still current as of late October, for instance), InsideFighting, and MMAWeekly (who loses some of my respect because they, for some reason, find it difficult to spell Fedor's name correctly; listed as "Emelianeko Fedor." Does the person that posts that not realize wtf they're doing?

Anyway, let's hear it.....most respected/trusted MMA Rankings.......

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"Also, they are biased in favor of richies like us(i.e. a ridiculous overrating of a fighter if he has fought for the UFC or PRIDE). It takes a more advanced level of perception to see beyond the self-serving class bias, just like it takes a greater apititude to realize that fighters outside of the Big Two are good even though we primarily watch the Big Two. "

Roughly translated as TV Good, no TV bad

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Everyone who has interest in rankings needs to put their opinions to use by submitting votes at www.mmaranks.com

There is no ranking that everyone is going to agree on, so the best we can hope for is to accumulate the most opinions and create a concensous out of it.

No one is putting more polling and research into rankings than mmaranks.com, and you can impact the ranks by becoming a regular contributor.

Some good points were made above.

It's true that MMA reporters can have a bias based on their personal exposure and experience with certain fighters.

Fighters themselves may have biases based on training partners and the love/hate relationships they have with opponents.

Fans may actually have the least bias, (though they still have some), because they are removed from interaction with fighters on a personal level.

All these groups, however, have valuable opinions that are valued at mmaranks.com

Another good point was made that TV exposure has seen some overvaluing of certain fighters. I'm not sure it can be helped. Very few, if any have seen every substantial fight. If you haven't seen Tengiz Tedoradze, you balk at voting for him, if you haven't seen Villasenor, Kawajiri, Matsune, Black, etc, same thing.

That's why mmaranks.com factors in mathematical credentials. This allows good unseen fighters to get a boost, and poor high-exposure fighters to be toned down.

It's the marriage of two sides of the story. The number crunching lets factual info from fights around the world count equally. The voting helps correct the idea that win/loss data doesn't always tell the whole story.

Anyway, the call is out! People around the world, MAKE YOUR VOTE COUNT at www.mmaranks.com

The more people involved globally, the better the results.

mine are by far the best

Oh, and I also should have said, no ranking is agreed on by all, (hey, I put mmaranks.com together, and I don't agree with all the results), but I accept that the results are the product of hard fact and the majority opinion from around the world.

If you disagree with where someone is on an mmaranks.com list, then it may be that the majority simply doesn't see it your way. It's important though, to get your opinions in the mix by voting.

rude22, why are the rankings not updated on a monthly basis? Sometimes it seems like the HW class gets updated twice monthly, while some of the others are still stuck back in October. I personally, have voted on the site and would like to see a regular update. Just my two cents. I like your site though.

Lately I've been working more on the layout of the site. I expanded each list to 15 spots which has called for change in a number of things including deeper research and different calculation setups.

The program I wrote to sort fighters mathematically has grown to over 3000 fighters, and is now pretty much running 24 hours a day to try to keep up. Getting everyone in order is plain and simply taking longer.

There is also something to the fact that some divisions haven't had as many significant happenings to warrant changes, and additionaly some divisions are more popular with voters.

The lists are driven by fight results and voter input. Without input, some divisions don't show enough change to encourage an update.

And lastly, there's the simple reason that I do the work in my spare time. mmaranks.com is not a MMA website for profit like some of the others. :)

Anyway, now that I've got the site revamped, I should be able to get each division updated quicker.

Just make sure everyone around the world is flooding the voter polls, so that each update has a substantial amount of new info to warrant an update.

Good stuff rude 22. ttt for voting on mmaranks.com.

ttt for more opinions on this thread too.

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I see the updated mmaranks.com LW rankings have Yves #1, Kawajiri #4, Shaolin at #6... after Kawajiri beat Shaolin. I think it used to be something like Shaolin #1, Yves #2 and Kawajiri #9(?).

There has got to be a logic to this but I have to admit that the logic sorta eludes me. Or then again, it might be that the computer is playing tricks with me.

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ellivville,

You're pretty much right on.

What you're seeing now is the middle of a bandwagon shift. :)

The factual math side of the ranks always recognized Kawajiri and was pushing him up as high as #8 or #9 previously, while the voting public dragged their feet.

Now that he has beaten Ribiero, the voting public has opened their eyes, and votes are coming in for him.

With votes coming in daily, we'll likely see him rise futher than his current spot before too long.

I find the unofficial UG forum member polls to often be the most accurate polls. Even though all of the polls are just opinions.

"Rankings are like Liberals...all are contradicting!!"

Spoken like a true Bush fan, can't even use the word "contradicting" properly. What a simpleton.

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Ryan G