Cody Garbrandt Leapfrogs 6 Champions on UFC Pound-for-Pound Rankings

The first UFC rankings of 2017 were posted yesterday on UFC.com and the new UFC Bantamweight Champion Cody ‘No Love’ Garbrandt surpassed the likes of other Ultimate Fighting Championship title holders Joanna Jedrzejczyk, Stipe Miocic, Michael Bisping, Tyron Woodley, Amanda Nunes, and Max Holloway on the official UFC pound-for-pound rankings.

‘No Love’ wasn’t even ranked on the pound-for-pound rankings last month.

Garbrandt (UFC record 6-0) defeated Dominick Cruz for the UFC Bantamweight Championship in the co-main event of UFC 207 last Friday night via Unanimous Decision. Garbrandt landed powerful strikes throughout the five-round fight, dropping Cruz on several occasions — even mocking ‘The Dominator’ by dancing and doing push-ups in the middle of the octagon after clowning the then-reigning bantamweight king:

‘No Love’ deserves credit for his championship-level performance last Friday night, but did the writers behind the UFC  rankings get it wrong when they placed the 25-year-old newly crowned  Bantamweight Champion above the other six UFC champs — 5 of which have defended their straps (Holloway hasn’t) inside the octagon — on the P4P list?

It would be more believable if you knew how the UFC rankings are determined, and luckily Reddit user Kneeco28 broke it down for the world yesterday:

First UFC rankings of 2017 are up - Now Created by just 18 Purported MMA Journalists no one has ever heard of.

Rankings: http://www.ufc.com/rankings?id=

I previously posted about the ill-advised UFC rankings here and here.

When the rankings were created the UFC projected about 90 journalists would take part in the rankings.

At the beginning, the rankings started with about 50 people taking part. That number rose to a high of 70. Then fell back down and plateaued at a pathetic 19 for most of last year. In my above-linked posts I have a timeline with links at different times to the number of people doing rankings and who there were.

Now it’s just 18! These “journalists” include:

• Steve Jeffery of CFMU 93.3 FM
• David Brown of the Cherokee Scout
• Eddie Pappani of KIOZ San Diego
• and a bunch of other people you’ve never heard of.

I read about MMA most days. And I’ve never heard of these people or most of the tiny panel that the UFC uses.

In one of the prior posts I talked about the very good reasons credible journalists might not want to take part in this ill-advised ranking system (tldr: why work for free? and it’s a clear conflict of interest).

But even if these 18 people were people we had heard of and could consider credible arbiters of mma. 18 is still not nearly enough people to make rankings that are given so much weight.

Under this system, each person has way too much power.

So, for instance, when Bob Emanuel of Scripps Howard (who?) hasn’t updated his rankings such that he still has Cruz as champ, has blank spaces in his rankings, and has, for instance, Hendricks as the #6 WW in the world, above Magny, that shit matters.

When Ariel Shnerer (who?) has Anderson Silva as a top 15 p4p fighter in the world in 2017, that matters.

It matters because the UFC makes matches based on these bullshit rankings. They show a number next to fighters’ names every time they’re on TV. It’s insanity. It’s a failed experiment and it needs to end asap. It hurts the sport and hurts fighters.

Do you agree with how the Ultimate Fighting Championship determines fighter rankings or does the system need a major overhaul as we venture into 2017?