UFC-Top Ten Ranking System Analysis!

UFC announced this past week that they would be doing official top ten rankings for the first time since the early days of the company (where the old management actually did mock rankings putting in people like Mike Tyson and Alexander Karelin). They will be doing top ten in each division as well as a pound-for-pound top ten. It will be done based on voting by accredited members of the MMA media, using on its broadcast and in all its promotional properties. 

 The ratings started this past week and will be updated after every show (or pretty much every week or two) and released two days after each show. They invited 90 reporters to vote, of which 28 did. There were a number of people asked who declined because they felt it was a conflict of interest. Of the people that I would consider the best full-time MMA reporters, almost none of them ended up voting. It should be noted that these ratings will have very little factor in booking (actually I was told no factor whatsoever), in the sense they are going to book matches based on what they perceive the mass audience would most want to see. The day the ratings came out, they finalized the Aldo vs. Pettis fight where a guy who had no fights in the featherweight division and wasn’t ranked was getting the next title shot due to the belief it’s in this case both the best and most marketable fight they can give Aldo right now. In that sense, it makes no sense to have the promotion release official ratings because all it can do is make them look silly when they themselves book GSP vs. Nick Diaz, or Aldo vs. Pettis or when their own rankings have Johny Hendricks as the top contender and they put someone else in the title match. 

Now they are going to be promoting a Jon Jones vs. Chael Sonnen matches when Sonnen doesn’t even have a top-ten ranking in the division in their own rankings. It was joked to me by those in the company that UFC was doing it because they wanted to make sure there were more things for them to be criticized about. The reality behind it is that FOX wanted official rankings to advertise fights and promote on television, similar to rankings voted on by reporters for college football and college basketball. They felt UFC needed to have them approved, but they would have no credibility coming from directly from UFC. So the decision was made to have the media vote on them. White said that if they had only nine of 90 reporters doing it, they were still going to publish them and use them. Beforehand, with no official rankings and booking for the masses (as in the big picture for all their business partners in growing the sport is to do fights that people most want to see), while people will complain, 95% of their fan base doesn’t care. 

When they go on television and say so-and-so- is the No. 1 contender and somebody else is getting a title shot, then even their mass audience is going to think something is weird. Plus, are reporters going to rank a guy suspended for failing a drug test as the No. 1 contender based on one win coming off a suspension, or with no wins and his suspension ending? Logically, when you are suspended, you should have to earn your ranking back from scratch if you are doing legit rankings, although Nick Diaz walked into being ranked No. 3 at welterweight. Plus, they’ve had enough issues with fighters citing web site rankings for turning down fights, but now, with UFC having their own rankings, people will cite those as official, as they should, as a reason to turn down a fight with a dangerous opponent who isn’t ranked if they are ranked, saying how it makes no sense. Plus, it’ll make contract negotiations more difficult, but as noted, those are difficult enough as it is. Agents for No. 6 who is being paid less than No. 8 will start complaining and use the numbers as justification, although to an extent privately those things were happening anyway.