It’s no secret that things change with lightning speed in mixed martial arts. There are simply too many ways to lose a fight for most men to stay at the top of the rankings for too long. In yesterday’s discussion over Jose Aldo’s place in the pound-for-pound rankings the volatility of rankings came up and made me curious just how the top of the rankings had shifted over the past 12 months.
As April’s rankings have not yet been released we’ll be working with March of 2010 and March of 2011. Let’s start with the heavyweights:
| Name | March 2010 | March 2011 |
| Fedor Emelianenko | #1 | #9 (-8) |
| Brock Lesnar | #2 | #4 (-2) |
| Frank Mir | #3 | #8 (-5) |
| Cain Velasquez | #4 | #1 (+3) |
| Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira | #5 | #10 (-5) |
| Shane Carwin | #6 | #6 (0) |
| Junior dos Santos | #7 | #3 (+4) |
| Brett Rogers | #8 | #14 (-6) |
| Alistair Overeem | #9 | #7 (+2) |
| Andrei Arlovski | #10 | UR |
Fabricio Werdum was not in the top 10 (#12) in March of 2010 and now checks in at #2. Antonio Silva is the only other new addition to the top 10, sitting at #5 after an impressive demolition of Fedor Emelianenko. It’s interesting to see the absolute blowing up of the top three of the division over the course of a single year. Mir would get crushed by Shane Carwin, Lesnar would get pushed to the limit by Carwin and then embarrassed by Cain Velasquez and Fedor would lose via quick submission to Fabricio Werdum and dominating TKO to Antonio Silva.
Light heavyweight:
| Name | March 2010 | March 2011 |
| Lyoto Machida | #1 | #5 (-4) |
| Mauricio Rua | #2 | #2 (0) |
| Rashad Evans | #3 | #3 (0) |
| Quinton Jackson | #4 | #4 (0) |
| Forrest Griffin | #5 | #6 (-1) |
| Anderson Silva | #6 | UR |
| Gegard Mousasi | #7 | #12 (-5) |
| Antonio Rogerio Nogueira | #8 | #9 (-1) |
| Thiago Silva | #9 | #9 (0) |
| Dan Henderson | #10 | #8 (+2) |
205 is a much more “stable” division than heavyweight with there being little movement throughout the top of the division. Mousasi fell, Machida dropped to the 5 spot but everything else is shockingly steady. Of course, this list leaves Jon Jones off, he’s currently #1 and back in 2010 was sitting at #20. That’s a pretty crazy jump of 19 spots. Other than that it’s all but business as usual.
Follow after the jump for the rest of the weight classes.
Middleweight:
| Name | March 2010 | March 2011 |
| Anderson Silva | #1 | #1 (0) |
| Dan Henderson | #2 | UR |
| Chael Sonnen | #3 | #3 (0) |
| Vitor Belfort | #4 | #7 (-3) |
| Nate Marquardt | #5 | #4 (+1) |
| Demian Maia | #6 | #5 (+1) |
| Jake Shields | #7 | #14 (-7) |
| Yushin Okami | #8 | #2 (+6) |
| Robbie Lawler | #9 | #12 (-3) |
| Jorge Santiago | #10 | #9 (+1) |
Another stable division where the majority of movement is from men dropping out of the division. Henderson went up to 205 to capture the Strikeforce light heavyweight championship while Shields signed with the UFC and moved back to 170 where he will challenge Georges St. Pierre. His move to welterweight has caused many voters to not rank him at 185 and thus his drop of seven spots. As for big movers, Hector Lombard went from #25 to #11 via his time stamping out scrubs in Bellator. Michael Bisping went from #14 to #8 and Ronaldo Souza now checks in at #6 after being at #15 in 2010.
Welterweight:
| Name | March 2010 | March 2011 |
| Georges St. Pierre | #1 | #1 (0) |
| Jon Fitch | #2 | #2 (0) |
| Thiago Alves | #3 | #4 (-1) |
| Josh Koscheck | #4 | #5 (-1) |
| Paulo Thiago | #5 | #15 (-10) |
| Dan Hardy | #6 | #16 (-10) |
| Nick Diaz | #7 | #7 (0) |
| Matt Hughes | #8 | #12 (-4) |
| Paul Daley | #9 | #10 (-1) |
| Martin Kampmann | #10 | #11 (-1) |
Paulo Thiago and Dan Hardy were pretty heavily overrated and that corrected itself. Now you have B.J. Penn, Carlos Condit and Diego Sanchez sliding into the top ten in an otherwise very stable division. Boring? Sure. But that’s 170 for you. GSP and Jon Fitch run things, everyone else is good but not good enough.
Lightweight:
| Name | March 2010 | March 2011 |
| B.J. Penn | #1 | #15 (-14) |
| Shinya Aoki | #2 | #4 (-2) |
| Eddie Alvarez | #3 | #6 (-3) |
| Kenny Florian | #4 | #7 (-3) |
| Gray Maynard | #5 | #2 (+3) |
| Tatsuya Kawajiri | #6 | #8 (-2) |
| Frankie Edgar | #7 | #1 (+6) |
| Gilbert Melendez | #8 | #3 (-5) |
| Sean Sherk | #9 | #9 (0) |
| Diego Sanchez | #10 | UR |
Penn is gone from the division, moving up to welterweight and pushing Jon Fitch to a draw, but the real news was his being chased out of the division after a controversial loss to Frankie Edgar followed by getting dominated in the rematch. Anthony Pettis went from unranked to #10 by dominating the rather unimpressive WEC lightweight roster and Jim Miller rose from #14 to #5 with a steady stream of wins, boasting seven straight victories. The top end of the division changed significantly over the past year but the same names hang out around the top, leaving heavyweight as, by far, the most volatile division among the five established “UFC divisions” during that time.