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The UFC’s in-house ranking system is a decade old as of February 2023. Over the years it’s experienced its fair share of struggles. Initially, voted on by a panel of notable industry figures, the promotion’s desire to keep absolute control over the system—for negotiating and advertising purposes—has eventually pushed the ranking crew to a group of marginal, nearly unknown media members.
More notably, however, is that fact that what was once a system entirely derided and ignored by fighters has become a backbone of the promotion’s matchmaking and a core fixation from talent when deciding what bouts they want to take. For years, now, fans have heard athletes climbing the promotional ladder say over and over again ‘I want to fight someone ranked higher than me.’ It’s a way of thinking that, upheld long enough can create a lot of inactivity and carefully crafted records.
List of ranked UFC fighters without a currently ranked win
Fight Tale owner Ovin Vithanage took some time recently to highlight this problem, with a list of top ranked UFC talent that has zero wins of other currently ranked UFC fighters. While there are some names on that list that don’t come as a surprise, given the lack of depth in their divisions, it’s also a list that includes a pair of former champions who are still current top contenders.
Here’s the complete rundown of Vithanage’s list (which has some notable omissions of fringe/newly ranked athletes):
- Stipe Miocic
- Paulo Costa
- Arman Tsarukyan
- Jalin Turner
- Bobby Green
- Umar Nurmagomedov
- Kai Kara-France
- Alex Perez
- Su Mudaerji
- Julianna Pena
- Tabatha Ricci
Stipe Miocic
Perhaps no fighter highlights the current rats nest that is UFC contendership so clearly as former champion Stipe Miocic. A full time fire fighter when he’s not in the cage, Miocic has fought just three times in the past five years. Each one of those bouts was for the UFC heavyweight title and, in fact, Miocic hasn’t competed in anything other than title fights since he first won the belt against Fabricio Werdum in 2016.
In the time Since, Miocic picked up wins over Alistair Overeem, Junior Dos Santos, Francis Ngannou, and Daniel Cormier (as well as losses to Ngannou and Cormier). Every single one of those fighters is either now retired or competing outside of the UFC. Miocic had been expected to face Jon Jones—once again for the UFC heavyweight championship–earlier this month, before an injury to Jones forced their fight to be pushed back to 2024. If Miocic loses to Jones and chooses to retire, it may just be that Andrei Arlovski will be the only man still fighting in the Octagon with a loss to the two-time champ.
Julianna Pena
Perhaps no one on this list comes with more of an asterisk than Julianna Pena, who beat all-time great former champion Amanda Nunes just back in 2021 to become bantamweight champ. Injury troubles and the call to motherhood and a string of injury troubles have had the former Ultimate Fighter winner competing in the Octagon just five times since January of 2017.
That’s a stretch that includes wins over Nicco Montano, Sara McMann, and the aforementioned victory over Nunes (as well as losses to Germaine de Randamie and Valentina Shevechenko, and the Nunes rematch). With GDR’s current career status somewhat unclear, Shevchenko is the only fighter Pena has fought that’s still active on the UFC roster. She’s expected to compete for the bantamweight title sometime in 2024.
Paulo Costa
Paulo Costa has never held a UFC title, but he did fight for the middleweight strap back in 2020. That opportunity came on the back of a 13-0 run to start his pro career, including victories over former champion Johny Hendricks, TUF finalist Uriah Hall, and then-perrenial top contender Yoel Romero.
Since losing to Adesanya in his one chance at gold, Costa has competed just twice in the past three years, losing a light heavyweight fight to Marvin Vettori in 2021, before beating former champion Luke Rockhold via unanimous decision in August of last year. That bout marked Rockhold’s first fight since 2019, after which the longtime AKA talent promptly retired from MMA. Costa was expected to fight Khamzat Chimaev back in October, after a prolonged contract battle with the UFC, but was forced from the fight due to illness.
Kai Kara-France
Alongside Alex Perez and Su Mudaerji, Kai Kara-France can hardly be blamed for a lack of ranked wins in the flyweight division. The City Kickboxing talent got his first chance to compete for a piece of UFC hardware in July of last year, in an interim title fight against Brandon Moreno. ‘Don’t Blink’ lost that bout, halting a three fight win streak that included wins over Askar Askarov, Cody Garbrandt, and Rogerio Bontorin.
Long the stepchild of the UFC’s talent pool, Flyweight has seen regular upheaval across its rankings ever since the final years of Demetrious Johnson’s title reign, when the promotion tried to shutter the division by cutting every flyweight who lost, regardless of ranking. Eventually even Dana White seemed to realize the foolishness of that plan and the UFC reversed course, but men’s 125 still has a distinct flavor of chaos, with fighter rising quickly to the top and seemingly falling away just as fast.
Arman Tsarukyan
Perhaps the only other real surprise on this list is Arman Tsarukyan. The Georgian-born Russo-Armenian fighter has looked every bit the part of a future top contender for the UFC, ever since his 2019 debut—a unanimous decision loss to current champion Islam Makhachev. Tsarukyan went on to win his next five bouts after that defeat, including victories over current PFL champ Olivier Aubin-Mercier, Matt Frevola, and Joel Alvarez.
Were it not for some incredibly questionable scoring of his fight against Mateusz Gamrot, the ATT talent wouldn’t even be on this list, but judges didn’t see that fight in his favor, so here he is. Tsarukyan most recently defeated Joaquim Silva in a very strange booking from the UFC, but is all set for a top ranked showdown against Beneil Dariush in the main event UFC Austin on December 2nd. A win there will see him clear of this whole mess and within spitting distance of his first title shot.