Rankings are the most pointless thing in mixed martial arts.
No, really, they are.
Why? The reasons are numerous and, quite frankly, obvious.
First of all, the UFC doesn’t have its own official rankings to determine fights and title shots. Yes, there’s a loose pecking order in the division, but nothing is put on paper (or on a Web site, or what have you) in terms of who ranks where. The fights in the UFC are left to matchmaker Joe Silva rather than statisticians.
However, even if the UFC did have their own rankings, the majority of rankings in the world would still be pointless.
Most MMA Web sites have their own versions of rankings determined by their “experts” in the field.
If the UFC had their own official rankings, the rankings on other Web sites would mean nothing. But the UFC doesn’t have their own rankings, so that means that the various Internet rankings must mean something, right?
Wrong. Rankings on any Web site mean absolutely nothing in the greater context of the mixed martial arts world for the simple reason that the most important fights—those in the UFC—are not derived from a coherent ranking system on even the most popular of MMA sites.
MMA rankings determine nothing of consequence and are only useful for two things in the MMA world.
First, they’re good for an increase in web traffic.
Second, they provide cannon fodder for debate between forum posters or other kinds of Internet aficionados as to why the rankings suck or don’t suck.
Mixed up in all this nonsense are the pound-for-pound rankings and the rankings of the greatest fighters of all time.
Both those topics are ridiculous since you’ll never get to see if the rankings are “right.” That is to say that in regular weight-class rankings, you can see the No. 1 guy fight the No. 2 guy and the rankings change accordingly.
But this is an impossibility with pound-for-pound and all-time rankings.
You can’t make Fedor Emelianenko a decade younger and throw him in there with Anderson Silva, just like you can’t make Jose Aldo the same size as Jon Jones. You just can’t do these things, so debating it is a completely useless gesture; a superlative exercise in futility.
Rankings, for all the importance they’re given, are worthless. They have no point in mixed martial arts and the MMA community would do well to stop debating endlessly about them.
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