Bloody Elbow August 2008 MMA Meta-Rankings: Heavyweight

Fighter Points Promotion Last Rank 1. Fedor Emelianenko 475 Affliction 1 2. Antonio Rodrigo Noguiera 455 UFC 2 3. Randy Couture 421 *** 3…

By: Nate Wilcox | 15 years ago
Bloody Elbow August 2008 MMA Meta-Rankings: Heavyweight
Bloody Elbow 2.0 | Anton Tabuena
Fighter Points Promotion Last Rank
1. Fedor Emelianenko 475 Affliction 1
2. Antonio Rodrigo Noguiera 455 UFC 2
3. Randy Couture 421 *** 3
4. Andrei Arlovski 410 Affliction 4
5. Josh Barnett 405 Affliction/WVR 5
6. Fabricio Werdum 376 UFC 6
7. Tim Sylvia 369 Affliction/Adrenaline 7
8. Gabriel Gonzaga 319 UFC 8
9. Mirko Filipovic 269 DREAM 9
10. Ben Rothwell 197 Affliction/Adrenaline 10
11. Aleksander Emelianenko 194 Affliction 11
12. Frank Mir 145 UFC 15
13. Heath Herring 132 UFC 12
14. Cheick Kongo 129 UFC 14
15. Sergei Kharitonov 119 ??? 16
16. Alistair Overeem 118 DREAM/Strikeforce 13
17. Cain Velasquez 106 UFC 18
18. Brock Lesnar 102 UFC NR
19. Roy Nelson 95 IFL(?) 17
20. Antonio Silva 88 EliteXC 21
21. Jake O’Brien 82 UFC 19
21. Pedro Rizzo 82 Affliction 20
23. Marcio Cruz 78 WVR 25
24. Jeff Monson 73 WVR(?) 22
25. Mark Hunt 69 DREAM 23

Not a lot of commentary to add to this month’s installment of the heavyweight meta-rankings.

Explanations of the methodology are in the full entry. The main thing to know is that the Meta-rankings are not the opinions of the BloodyElbow staff, rather they’re a compilation of the rankings of 19 leading MMA web sites. The goal is not to tell you who we think are the best fighters, but rather to inform you how the MMA blogosphere rates the top fighters.

Affliction has seven of the top twenty-five fighters, but more importantly, they’ve got five of the top ten under contract. The only compelling matchup they have scheduled is also the only interesting heavyweight fight scheduled for the rest of the year — Arlovski/Barnett should be a good fight and the winner will certainly have earned a shot at Fedor. We’ll see if Affliction can book it.

The UFC has nine of twenty-five, Brock Lesnar’s entry into the meta-rankings certainly doesn’t hurt. Expect Shane Carwin to climb into the top 25 soon. DREAM has three of the top guys. WVR/Sengoku sort of has three as well, but Monson probably won’t be fighting for them again and Marcio Cruz is just feeble.

Based on the premise that opinions are like assholes, everybody has one and they all stink. instead of putting up our own subjective fighter rankings, we compile and average the rankings of every source we could find online.

The goal is to show how the MMA community rates the fighters, not to bore you with our opinions.

Be sure and look at the points, they’re a much more telling number than the ranking. There’s clearly a huge gulf between the top 9 fighters and those that follow.

A total of 39 fighters were ranked in the top 25 by one source or another, for reasons of sanity I only track the top 25 (26 due to a tie) most highly rated fighters.

25 points are awarded for a first place ranking, 16 for a 10th place ranking, 1 for a 25th place ranking. A formula is used to “normalize” the data so all fighters are awarded points from those lists that do not include a full 25 fighters. Fuller explanation below.

Rankings were compiled from the following sites: TAGG Radio, Sherdog, Cage Potato, MMA On Tap, Five Ounces of Pain, Houston Chronicle’s Brawl Sports, WAMMA, MMA Fighting, MMA-ELO, FCFighter, 411 Mania, FightMatrix, MMA Playground, HDNet/Inside MMA, MMAVT (Japan), Figure 4 Online, Fighters.com, MMA Weekly, and Total MMA. MMA News and MMA Madness hadn’t updated their rankings for August.

The normalization scheme as explained by JCS of FightMatrix is here:

The “normalization number” (new name) would be:

120
divided by
(Total Fighters Found in Any List minus 10)

Every fighter found somewhere else, but on a Top 10 list would be assigned this number.

The “normalization” number would not apply to a fighter not found on a Top 25 list. They would simply get 0.

So the process would be:

Do all of the Top 25 lists first, #1 = 25, #2 = 24…. #24 = 2, #25 = 1
Do all of the Top 10 lists, same scoring structure.. stops at #10 = 16

Figure out that normalization variable.

Fill in the normalization variable to all fighters not found in the Top 10 lists, but found elsewhere.

Do your totals and rank.

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About the author
Nate Wilcox
Nate Wilcox

Nate Wilcox is the founding editor of BloodyElbow.com. As such he has hired every editor and writer to work for the site. Wilcox’s writing for BE is known for its emphasis on MMA history, the evolution of fighting techniques and strong opinions. Wilcox developed the SBN MMA consensus rankings which were featured in USA Today from 2009 to 2011. Before founding BE, Wilcox was a political operative working for such figures as Senators John Kerry and Mark Warner and an early political blogger. He is the co-author of Netroots Rising, a history of the political blogosphere from 2003 to 2007. Wilcox also hosts the Let It Roll podcast on music history for the Pantheon Podcast Network.

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