Have you ever looked at a recently announced matchup in the UFC and wonder to yourself, “How did they come up with that?”
Or have you ever heard a story where one guy refuses to fight another, and you think to yourself, “Why would they even ask that legend to fight that guy?”
Well, if you have, then you too agree that the UFC should have rankings for each weight division.
We hear all the time that fighter X is a top ten fighter or that if this guy beats that guy, then he’s in the mix for a title shot. But in retrospect, whose top ten truly counts?
None other than Dana White and Lorenzo Fertita’s.
One way in which having rankings in the UFC would help the sport is in regard to Dana and Lorenzo’s match making.
In the near future, fight cards are decimated with injuries. Having a top ten would help match making when a scheduled fighter can’t perform on a certain card. Official rankings would make things easier because they would have a list of where guys are and who could possibly step in.
Another positive result of the implementation of rankings would be the avoidance of dust ups like the one which involved Glover Teixeira and Shogun Rua.
If an official ranking system in the UFC had Teixeira at third and Rua at fourth, what reason would Rua have had to not take that fight?
He’d want to take it to move up in the rankings and potentially face the winner of the Jon Jones/Dan Henderson fight. There would have been no stories about Shogun preferring to be cut rather than facing Teixeira and no back and forth between Shogun’s camp and the UFC powers.
So, rankings would help the fighters too.
Another way that this would truly help is in regards to the fans.
Not only hardcore fans but also the casual fans watching on TV. The UFC actually teased us back at the first UFC on FOX show when they displayed their top five heavyweights. It showed who was where and made it easier to do what we all love to do—play matchmaker at home. Their top five looked like this:
1. Cain Velasquez (Champion)
2. Junior Dos Santos
3. Brock Lesnar
4. Antonio Nogueira
5. Shane Carwin
Think what you want about those rankings, but it was easy for the viewers to see where everybody stood in the eyes the UFC.
Not only that, but it allowed the fighters to see who they had to knock off to get to the top. All around it was a great concept to utilize, even though we have not seen it since.
So, do the right thing for everyone involved, Zuffa. Bring official rankings to the UFC.
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