Tag: Rankings

MMA Top 10 Middleweights: Mark Munoz Rises

Filed under: UFC, Strikeforce, Rankings, MiddleweightsCould Mark Munoz be a future contender to Anderson Silva’s middleweight title? That’s a question few people would have asked before UFC 131. But after Munoz beat Demian Maia, it’s a serious question…

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Could Mark Munoz be a future contender to Anderson Silva‘s middleweight title? That’s a question few people would have asked before UFC 131. But after Munoz beat Demian Maia, it’s a serious question.

After defeating Maia, Munoz is 6-1 since moving down to middleweight, with the only loss coming by split decision to Yushin Okami, the UFC‘s current No. 1 middleweight contender. Munoz is probably only one more win away from being the UFC’s best option to fight Silva, assuming Silva beats Okami.

Munoz would be a huge underdog to Silva, of course, but every middleweight is a huge underdog to Silva. And Munoz, a former NCAA champion wrestler, at least has the tools to threaten Silva where he’s weakest. Munoz and Silva are friends and training partners, and they might not wish to fight each other. But if both of them win their next fights, we could be heading toward a situation where fighting each other is what the UFC asks them to do.

See where I have Munoz ranked among the middleweights in MMA below.

(Editor’s note: The individual fighter’s ranking the last time we did middleweights are in parentheses.)

1. Anderson Silva (1): The last time Silva lost, it was by disqualification when he illegally kicked Okami in the head on the ground. Since then Silva is 14-0, with half of those wins coming by first round knockout or technical knockout.

2. Chael Sonnen (2): Sonnen still deserves to be ranked No. 2 because of his impressive win over Okami and his tough fight with Silva, but soon he’s going to start dropping because of inactivity. There doesn’t seem to be any end in sight for Sonnen’s problems getting an athletic commission to license him.

3. Vitor Belfort (3): Belfort’s 19-9 record really doesn’t do his career justice, as the nine losses are to a who’s who of great fighters: He’s lost to Randy Couture twice, Alistair Overeem twice and Kazushi Sakuraba, Chuck Liddell, Tito Ortiz, Dan Henderson and Anderson Silva. Up next for Belfort is Yoshihiro Akiyama.

4. Yushin Okami (4): Although Okami does technically have a victory over Silva on his record, Silva was getting the better of Okami before he was disqualified for the illegal kick. If Okami can beat Silva in their August rematch in Rio, it would probably be the biggest upset of the year in MMA.

5. Mark Munoz (NR): Getting knocked cold by Matt Hamill might have been the best thing to ever happen to Munoz. That fight made him decide to move down from 205 pounds to 185, and he’s much more impressive at the lighter weight.

6. Demian Maia (5): The Maia-Munoz fight could have gone either way, and even in defeat Maia showed that his striking is continuing to improve. However, the fight also showed that Maia can’t just submit anyone he gets to the ground. In his first five UFC fights Maia submitted all five opponents, but in his last six fights he hasn’t submitted anyone.

7. Brian Stann (6): A matchup between Stann and Munoz would make a lot of sense as a next step for the UFC, and the winner would have a strong case for being the next No. 1 contender in the middleweight division.

8. Ronaldo Souza (7): Jacare, the Strikeforce middleweight champion, will defend his title against Luke Rockhold in September. Rockhold is 7-1, and all seven wins are by first-round stoppage, but he’s not on the same level as Jacare, who should be able to make Rockhold tap.

9. Wanderlei Silva (8): The soon-to-be 35-year-old Silva isn’t the fighter he once was, but his UFC 132 fight with Chris Leben promises to be an all-out war. And if he wins in spectacular fashion, it’s possible that the Axe Murderer could get the next shot at the middleweight belt.

10. Michael Bisping (10): With no UFC events in England this year, Bisping will not have any fights in his homeland for the first year since 2006, when he was an Ultimate Fighter contestant. Instead Bisping will coach on The Ultimate Fighter and take on Jason “Mayhem” Miller in December.

 

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MMA Top 10 Featherweights: Kenny Florian Moves In

Filed under: UFC, Rankings, FeatherweightsKenny Florian is the most likely next contender for the UFC featherweight championship. But has he really earned a title shot against Jose Aldo?

If the way you “earn” a title shot is to work your way up the la…

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Kenny Florian is the most likely next contender for the UFC featherweight championship. But has he really earned a title shot against Jose Aldo?

If the way you “earn” a title shot is to work your way up the ladder and become the No. 2 fighter in your weight class, then the answer is no. Florian has fought just once at 145 pounds — his unanimous decision victory over Diego Nunes at UFC 131 — and that’s not enough to get him in the No. 2 spot ahead of Chad Mendes, who’s been fighting at featherweight his entire career and built up a 10-0 record.

But the real way a fighter earns a title shot is to become the guy the fans want to see fighting for a title: The UFC is in the business of selling pay-per-views, and Florian vs. Aldo would sell far more pay-per-views than Mendes vs. Aldo. Mendes has fought in the Octagon once and isn’t all that well known, while Florian has fought in Octagon 16 times and is a fan favorite. That’s why he’ll get the next crack at Aldo.

However, that’s not to say Florian isn’t also among the elite featherweights in MMA. Find out where I have him ranked below.

(Number in parentheses is the fighter’s previous ranking.)

1. Jose Aldo (1): So far, in the UFC and WEC there hasn’t been a featherweight who has what it takes to challenge Aldo: He’s 9-0 fighting under the Zuffa banner and hasn’t been in any real trouble. We’ll see if Florian can be the man to test Aldo, but I have my doubts.

2. Chad Mendes (2): Mendes thought he had earned the next shot at Aldo, but instead he’ll take on Rani Yahya in August, and hope that a good showing there earns him a title fight after that. Mendes is only 10 fights into his MMA career and still a little green, so having to wait a little longer may be good for him.

3. Hatsu Hioki (3): Here’s hoping Hioki is able to sign with the UFC soon. The best featherweights in the world are waiting for Hioki, who has been great in Japan and whose long limbs and well-rounded striking and grappling style could make him a threat to most of the top competition in the UFC.

4. Kenny Florian (NR): Is one win at 145 pounds enough to make Florian worthy of a Top 5 ranking? I think it is, considering that the one win was a very impressive one against a good opponent, and considering that Florian was generally recognized as a Top 5 fighter in a more talented weight class when he was fighting at 155.

5. Manny Gamburyan (4): Gamburyan is trying to bounce back from his loss to Aldo in September, and he’s got a very interesting fight coming up against Tyson Griffin, who like Gamburyan and Florian is a former lightweight hoping for more success in the shallower waters of the featherweight division.

6. Marlon Sandro (6): Bellator’s featherweight division has picked up some top-notch talent, and in my opinion the best of the bunch is Sandro, who will take on fellow Brazilian Genair da Silva in the first round of Bellator’s summer featherweight tournament.

7. Mark Hominick (7): His gutsy performance in defeat against Jose Aldo endeared Hominick to MMA fans. There’s talk that Hominick could face Chan Sung Jung next, in a fight that couldn’t possibly be anything less than thrilling.

8. Erik Koch (8): Koch is 12-1 in his career, with the only loss coming against Mendes. He’s been matched up with Season 12 Ultimate Fighter winner Jonathan Brookins in September.

9. Dustin Poirier (10): Poirier has looked like a much better fighter since moving down to featherweight, dominating both Josh Grispi and Jason Young at 145 pounds. Poirier is only 22 years old and is a likely future title contender.

10. Diego Nunes (9): Although he came up short against Florian, Nunes is only 28 years old and not done improving. He has a lot of big featherweight fights ahead of him.

 

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MMA Top 10 Bantamweights: Mighty Mouse Makes a Move

Filed under: UFC, Rankings, BantamweightsDemetrious “Mighty Mouse” Johnson is the next big thing in the bantamweight division in mixed martial arts. Or maybe the next little thing.

Johnson is small even by bantamweight standards (if the UFC ever adds …

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Demetrious “Mighty Mouse” Johnson is the next big thing in the bantamweight division in mixed martial arts. Or maybe the next little thing.

Johnson is small even by bantamweight standards (if the UFC ever adds a 125-pound flyweight class, he’ll probably join it), but he showed once again in his UFC 130 victory over Miguel Torres that he has strong enough wrestling that he can take down bigger opponents, keep them down, and grind out decisions. And Johnson is so quick moving in and out that he has managed to avoid the “boring” label that’s too often fastened to fighters who rely on their wrestling like that.

There’s no telling how far the 24-year-old Johnson can go, but he’s already come a long way: See just how high he is on the bantamweight board below.

(Number in parentheses is the fighter’s rank in the last bantamweight list.)

1. Dominick Cruz (1): The champion is now less than a month away from his long-awaited rematch with Urijah Faber at UFC 132. In that fight, Faber retained the WEC featherweight title and handed Cruz the only loss of his career. This time Cruz is the champion, and the favorite.

2. Urijah Faber (2): Faber beat Cruz handily last time, but the big question is whether he’s as good a fighter now as he was then. The 32-year-old Faber has looked like he’s slowing down in the last couple of years, while the 25-year-old Cruz is still improving. It’s a tough fight to call.

3. Joseph Benavidez (3): His fight with Eddie Wineland in August in Milwaukee will be a good challenge for Benavidez, who is 14-2 in his MMA career, with both losses coming by decision against Cruz.

4. Brian Bowles (4): The Cruz-Faber main event isn’t the only big bantamweight fight at UFC 132: Bowles fights Takeya Mizugaki on the undercard. A Bowles win could set him up for the next shot at the Cruz-Faber winner.

5. Demetrious Johnson (NR): The UFC really ought to give Johnson a pay raise. Earning $6,000 to show and a $6,000 bonus for winning just isn’t enough for a fighter who’s in the Top 5 of his weight class. Johnson isn’t a big draw now, but he looks like a future title contender, and a long-term contract extension would seem to make sense for both the UFC and Johnson.

6. Scott Jorgensen (6): Jorgensen showed off some very impressive ground and pound against Ken Stone at the Ultimate Fighter Finale, with a brutal right hand to Stone’s chin from inside Stone’s guard, knocking him cold. Jorgensen was outclassed by Cruz when they fought for the bantamweight title in December, and I wouldn’t give him much of a chance in a rematch, but he’s a threat to anyone else in the division.

7. Miguel Torres (5): It’s tough to see the way Torres has fallen: He’s lost three of his last five after starting his career 37-1. Torres still has plenty of good fights left in him, but it’s probably not realistic to think he’ll ever get the bantamweight title back.

8. Brad Pickett (NR): Pickett was supposed to fight Torres at UFC 130, but an injury forced him out of the fight and Johnson took his spot. Pickett beat Johnson in April of 2010, and you could make an argument that he deserves to be ranked higher than Johnson because of that, but I have Johnson ahead of Pickett based on how much Johnson looks like he’s improved in the last 14 months.

9. Eddie Wineland (8): Wineland lost to Faber in March but gave him a much tougher fight than most people expected, and now he’s got a big fight with Benavidez in August. Wineland has been around a long time (he was the first WEC featherweight champion), and sometimes that makes people forget that he’s only 26 years old and is still getting better.

10. Renan Barão (9): Barao’s unanimous decision victory over Cole Escovedo at UFC 130 runs his incredible streak to 26 straight wins (with one no contest mixed in). It’s time to see how Barao does against Top 10 competition.

 

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MMA Top 10 Middleweights: Brian Stann Moving Up

Filed under: UFC, Strikeforce, Rankings, MiddleweightsBrian Stann has always been a great story. What he’s showing now — in the year since he moved down to middleweight — is that he’s a great fighter.

Stann, a Naval Academy graduate who earned a Sil…

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Brian Stann has always been a great story. What he’s showing now — in the year since he moved down to middleweight — is that he’s a great fighter.

Stann, a Naval Academy graduate who earned a Silver Star for service in Iraq, was a decent fighter at light heavyweight. But we heard about him more for what he had done outside the cage than in it. But Stann has looked reborn at middleweight, going 3-0 at 185 pounds with three finishes, most recently knocking out Jorge Santiago at UFC 130.

Find out just how high Stann has moved up in the middleweight rankings below.

(Editor’s note: The individual fighter’s ranking the last time we did middleweights are in parentheses.)

1. Anderson Silva (1): The champion defends his belt against the last man to beat him, Yushin Okami, in August. Okami’s previous victory over Silva was by disqualification, and Silva is a heavy favorite to avenge his loss and improve his all-time best UFC record to 14-0.

2. Chael Sonnen (2): If Sonnen doesn’t get his licensing issues straightened out soon, he’ll start to drop down the rankings as a result of inactivity. But he’s still the man who gave Silva by far his toughest test in the Octagon, and the man who put a thorough beating on Okami. If he can return to the Octagon as the same fighter he was in 2010, Sonnen deserves to be considered the No. 2 middleweight in the world.

3. Yushin Okami (3): It’s not completely inconceivable that Okami could pull the upset against Silva, but anyone who saw their first bout knows that Silva was completely outclassing Okami in the stand-up department before getting disqualified for an illegal kick to the head on the ground. Okami will need to stick to Sonnen’s game plan and secure repeated takedowns in order to have any chance of beating Silva.

4. Vitor Belfort (4): Belfort is a tough middleweight to assess because he has fought so infrequently at 185 pounds, but I expect him to show against Yoshihiro Akiyama at UFC 133 that he’s still one of the hardest hitters in the sport.

5. Demian Maia (5): Maia’s upcoming UFC 131 fight with Mark Munoz should be a great opportunity for him to showcase his impressive Brazilian jiu jitsu skills. The middleweight division’s best grappler has looked a little tentative since his fight with Silva, winning a couple of easy decisions rather than going for the finish. That should change against Munoz.

6. Brian Stann (9): How high can Stann go at middleweight? It’s almost impossible to imagine him beating Silva, but then again it’s almost impossible to imagine anyone beating Silva at 185 pounds. Assuming Silva beats Okami, Stann will be the UFC’s highest-ranked middleweight who hasn’t already had a crack at the champion. Stann could be one more win away from a title shot.

7. Ronaldo Souza (7): Jacare, the Strikeforce middleweight champion, has expressed frustration at the slow pace of Strikeforce matchmaking. It would make a lot of sense to have Jacare follow the lead of Nick Diaz and enter the Octagon sooner rather than later.

8. Wanderlei Silva (8): His upcoming fight with Chris Leben at UFC 132 is a good chance for the Axe Murderer to get on his first winning streak since he beat Ricardo Arona and Kazuyuki Fujita back-to-back five years ago.

9. Jorge Santiago (6): In his return to the UFC, Santiago ran into a buzz saw in Stann, who took the fight to Santiago and never relented. I’m still optimistic that Santiago can be competitive in the UFC, but maybe not against truly elite middleweight competition.

10. Michael Bisping (10): Bisping will get a promotional push when he coaches against Jason “Mayhem” Miller on The Ultimate Fighter and then fights him in the Finale in December. Bisping has won three fights in a row, and if he makes it four, the UFC might be tempted to put him in a title fight against Anderson Silva in England in 2012.

 

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MMA Top 10 Welterweights: Rick Story Earns His Place

Filed under: UFC, Strikeforce, Rankings, WelterweightsThere’s an exciting new entrant in the list of the Top 10 welterweights in mixed martial arts, as Rick Story earned his spot with an upset of Thiago Alves at UFC 130.

Alves has been considered a To…

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There’s an exciting new entrant in the list of the Top 10 welterweights in mixed martial arts, as Rick Story earned his spot with an upset of Thiago Alves at UFC 130.

Alves has been considered a Top 5 welterweight for years, but Story took the fight to him in the first and second rounds, and although Alves showed in the third round that there are still some holes in Story’s stand-up game, Story demonstrated that he has a strong chin, weathered the storm and came out on top. That kind of victory — Story’s sixth in a row inside the Octagon — warrants a place in the Top 10.

Find out below where, exactly, I rank Story, and who the other new entrants in the welterweight Top 10 are.

(Editor’s note: The individual fighter’s ranking the last time we did welterweights is in parentheses.)

1. Georges St. Pierre (1): Still the champ, the big question is whether he’s going to defend his welterweight title against Nick Diaz, or move up to middleweight to challenge for Anderson Silva’s belt. A Diaz fight seems to be the one that MMA fans want, and that the UFC is working hard to arrange. UPDATE: Hours after we posted this, the UFC announced that GSP-Diaz will happen in October.

2. Jon Fitch (3): The longtime No. 2 welterweight in the world is on the mend from a shoulder injury, and there’s no word on when he might return. Prior to his injury, the UFC announced that he’d have a rematch with B.J. Penn next, but Jake Shields might make more sense as an opponent for him.

3. Jake Shields (2): A fight between Shields and Fitch would be the best way to determine who’s the top welterweight aside from St. Pierre, and it would also be a fascinating stylistic matchup between two guys whose ground games are among the best in all of MMA.

4. Nick Diaz (5): It appears that Diaz’s silly flirtation with going into professional boxing is now behind him, and the lone remaining question is whether the UFC can figure out a way to get him in the Octagon with St. Pierre. Diaz is Strikeforce’s welterweight champion and one of its most popular fighters, so Showtime doesn’t want to lose Diaz. But the fight that makes the most sense is a UFC pay-per-view to determine the real welterweight champion of mixed martial arts.

5. Josh Koscheck (6): There’s still no word on when Koscheck will return from the ugly beating that St. Pierre put on him. Koscheck has always prided himself on being active and ready to fight at a moment’s notice, so it says something about how badly he was hurt against St. Pierre that he still can’t even commit to a return date, six months after the GSP fight.

6. B.J. Penn (7): Like Fitch, the man he fought to a draw early this year, Penn is injured and out of action. If his recovery and Koscheck’s recovery line up and they’re both ready to return at around the same time, that would make a great fight.

7. Carlos Condit (8): If the UFC can’t make St. Pierre-Diaz work, Condit would probably be next in line. Other than Diaz, he’s the highest-ranked welterweight who hasn’t already fought St. Pierre, and he’s also a likable, marketable guy who’s on a three-fight winning streak and coming off wins that earned him Knockout of the Night and Fight of the Night bonuses. Condit has a tough fight with Dong Hyun Kim at UFC 132, so thinking about him as a No. 1 contender might be getting a little too far ahead of things, but in a division without many available challengers, Condit would make sense.

8. Rick Story (NR): One of the exciting things about Story is his age. At 26, he’s younger than everyone ahead of him in the welterweight rankings, and he’s got a lot of good years ahead of him and time to keep getting better. It might seem like the 30-year-old St. Pierre will be champion forever, but the truth is, athletes start to slow down in their 30s. Story is in his athletic prime, and I see a welterweight title shot in his future.

9. Rory MacDonald (NR): Speaking of young and promising fighters, MacDonald is only 21 years old but looked like a seasoned pro while manhandling Nate Diaz for 15 minutes at UFC 129. MacDonald is 11-1, with his only loss coming in a great fight against Condit. Next MacDonald will get another tough test against Mike Pyle at UFC 132

10. John Hathaway (NR): Hathaway is a tough guy to assess because he has great potential at the age of 23, but he’s looked like he’s taking a step back in his last couple of fights, a loss to Mike Pyle and a split decision win over Kris McCray. His 15-1 record includes wins over Story and Diego Sanchez, but it may be time for Hathaway to shake up his training.

 

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Alistair Overeem: Where Does He Belong in the Heavyweight Rankings?

Mixed martial arts rankings are always a hotly debated topic among MMA fans. This is primarily due to two reasons. The first is that fighters compete only a small number of times every year and the second is because ranking are somewhat relevant as to …

Mixed martial arts rankings are always a hotly debated topic among MMA fans. This is primarily due to two reasons. The first is that fighters compete only a small number of times every year and the second is because ranking are somewhat relevant as to which fighters will fight for a title. Although no two […]

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Alistair Overeem: Where Does He Belong in the Heavyweight Rankings?