Feb 1, 2010 - 3:23:57 PM BY JASON AMADI, MMATORCH COLUMNIST
By Jason Amadi, MMATorch columnist
If you look at any major sport in this world, there are plenty of numbers and facts that the hardcore fans love to discuss, and that participants even throw around every so often. As most fans know, the most important factoid discussed universally, among every sport is ranking.
Whether it be football, basketball, golf, there is always a way to tell who is superior through some sort of numerical hierarchy. That exists in MMA, but there is no credibility when discussing fighter rankings, because it almost always depends on whose list you're looking at.
There are certain fighters who are universally ranked at the top of their class, like Fedor, Georges St. Pierre, B.J. Penn, Anderson Silva, Lyoto Machida, and Jose Aldo. Beyond those select few, it becomes a complete mess.
If you follow the Welterweight Division's rankings for the past few years, for example, you'll have noticed that prior to his title shot, Jon Fitch was universally ranked number two in the world, second best to Georges St. Pierre. After his loss to GSP, he dropped to number three, while Thiago Alves, GSP's next contender, moved up to number two.
After Alves's destruction at the hands of the welterweight kingpin, the whole thing became a mess. Many rankings have him ranked number Fitch number two again; many have Alves ranked number two.
In a similar case last year, in January of 2009, Andrei Arlovski was thought to be the number two heavyweight in the world prior to his clash with Fedor Emelianenko, the world's top heavyweight. After his loss, he stayed at number two for months, until he lost to previously unranked Brett Rogers.
The whole thing is a colossal mess based mainly on individual opinion, yet every so often, you'll hear fighters in interviews make reference to how certain performances can impact their rankings, as if they were concrete, which is embarrassing for some, as often times when they talk about their ranking, hardcore fans often know that they aren't ranked in the top ten at all, among certain websites.
The only viable solution is for a governing body like the World Alliance of Mixed Martial Arts, to try to rank fighters, but once they got into the business of awarding championships, they lost almost all credibility, since Zuffa won't play ball with them, and they have six of the seven, number one ranked fighters in the world.
The UFC will likely never do a top ten list for each division, because they don't have all of the top ten fighters in each division under contract, despite having the majority in most cases. Also, it is unlikely any organization will ever acknowledge a top ten list on television because it would tie their hands for matchmaking purposes. It would make fights between unranked fighters seem irrelevant, and make number one contender fights like the one between Dan Hardy and Mike Swick recently seem illogical, when neither the number two nor number three fighters ranked fighters are involved.
It will likely take an already respected brand like ESPN to take a more vested interest in MMA and rank fighters in the top ten for there to be a legitimate and universally respected list. This is a shame considering the importance of rank in professional sports and the UFC's lofty goal of making MMA the number one sport in the world.
[Andrei Arlovski art credit Cory Gould (c) MMATorch]
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I think there absolutely needs to be a top ten rankings list in MMA.
Without a top tens list, the sport of MMA will never become a legitimate
sport like the NFL. Imagine if the NFL was like MMA today (more
specifically the UFC). "Lets see what happens if we put the patriots
against the cardinals.", or "Oh oh, look this new team has colors that
everyone loves, lets put it against the highest ranked team and see what
happens".
You get legitimate contenders getting hosed by new fighters that haven't
earned a title shot, like Brock or Vitor and you get endless arguments
about who's the best in their division.
Lets take a look at WAMMA. WAMMA is a great organization to put out a
universal top tens list. But as Jason said, they also hand out a universal
belt, which the UFC will not accept.
Is the belt the problem or is the UFC the problem?
Lets face it, even if someone were to make a unified list, it would NEVER
be legitimate unless EVERY fighter on that list can face one another. This
can NEVER happen unless each organization in the sport works together to
put on cross-promotional fights. The only organization against this is the
UFC. The UFC has simultaneously been the cause for the sports greatest
growth as well as its greatest disability.
So using logic:
If, for the sport to be as legitimate as current sports like the NFL, there
needs to be a universal top ten rankings
AND
For there to be a universal top ten rankings, there needs to be
cross-promotion
Therefore:
For the sport to be legitimate there needs to be cross-promotion in MMA.
By cross-promotion, i don't mean have a Fedor vs Brock fight. This could
never work for obvious business reasons.
Instead, there needs to be separate belts for each promoter and then an
annual or semi-annual WAMMA tournament that takes the top ranked 2 or 3
fighters from each promotion (or maybe the top ten) and puts then against
each other for a universal world MMA belt.
Each promotion continues to grow and compete individually. Each promotion
can continue to acquire as much talent as they can while using their
marketing and presentation skills to grab the largest audience possible.
Does the UFC have a reason to cross-promote or grow the sport? No, believe
it or not. The sport can fail while the UFC succeeds. Success for the UFC
is making tons of money, period. But if they let the sport fail and make
tons of money, the product will be an illegitimate sport more similar to
the WWE than to the NFL.
