Rankings: Quarter 1, 2025

After 10,000 years we are back (with rankings)!

For a bit over a year, , the Fight Island rankings have unfortunately been dormant. We apologized last time we had a lengthy break in 2023 from making the rankings because, at the time, the tempo was lacking and because the investment into MMA was frankly low. We are still struggling at times with our investment in MMA given the frustrating landscape of the sport.

However, we are bringing back our rankings with an adjusted approach. Previously, we aimed for monthly rankings and tried to provide a deep analysis. This proved untenable, and we are now shifting to quarterly rankings with the same amount of analysis and discussion as before.

Because MMA has no regular scheduling throughout the year, it proved difficult to provide quick and updated rankings on a monthly basis. While we tried our best, this ultimately caused a bit of burnout which prompted a shift to quarterly rankings updates.

Releasing our rankings four times a year allows us to provide more in-depth discussions, demonstrate significant shifts in the divisions, as well as allow for a bit more time to breath and see where someone truly sits rather than being quickly given a higher rank for a flashy win.

All rankings shown were submitted on March 31, 2025.

Ranking Philosophies

Going forward, we have adjusted things to show only the top 15 individual fighters, though this sometimes is a longer due to tie breakers. This is purely for visual aesthetics and to save time when formulating the lists.

With this said, we would like to remind you of our ranking philosophies:

Carl bases his ranks on a qualitative assessment of the fighter.

Eric opts to assess fighters based on their more recent string of fights as a cumulative assessment.

The goal of combining these approaches is ultimately an attempt at a holistic view of the fighters.

Criteria for Rankings

Furthermore, here are the criteria we all use when discussing a fighters placement in the rankings:

a. Fighter has made weight in the division in the last 12 months.

b. If fighter has a fight booked when those 12 months elapse they will not be removed from eligibility.

c. Fighters will be classified by actual weight on the scale, division names and other promotional eligibility criteria notwithstanding.

d. A fighter must be clearly competing in a division and will be removed when declaring intention to switch or retire.

e. If a weight division is seemingly dead due to lack of promotion of it across any of the major organizations, then we will remove that division from our list.

Men’s Rankings

Women’s Rankings

Discussion

Eric: First, I think this change into doing a quarterly approach to rankings is a good approach. I know I was getting a bit…burnt out so to speak when I was more active with the monthly rankings.

Carl: Even as a self-admitted rankings pervert, it’s harder and harder to feel invested in them these days. The UFC’s matchmaking is only getting more arbitrary and the B-league championship scene is pretty dire, so this is probably the best plan.

The Amount of Ties

Eric: I think is worth noting is that there are ties across almost all divisions in our rankings. I think, at least in concept, this is a good sign that there is disagreement in how and who we rank. It also signals to me that this sport has more need for ties for rankings. Like…I don’t think anyone would disagree with the Top 3 people in Women’s Bantamweight being the same three we ranked at #1, with Pena in the top spot solely for being the belt holder. Additionally, for those curious, we use a points system for rankings which is why this sort of thing can happen. Same with the amount of ties in Lightweight, which we all accept and agree is, ultimately, the most stacked division across all of MMA.

Carl: Oddly, for as much as I was just complaining about the aforementioned anti-rankings matchmaking, the ties are a big indicator of the subjective weeds you can get into. Women’s Bantamweight is a great example: I, personally, ranked Pennington above Pena despite Pena winning the belt from her, because I think the decision was an incredible robbery. But the UFC title is the de facto standard for determining the top fighter in the sport, so Eric’s point about Pena being #1 is entirely sensible. But how much of that comes down to the undeniable observation of the UFC’s monopoly on mixed martial arts and how much comes down to their own choices eroding that right? The UFC ranks Jon Jones above Tom Aspinall because his belt is The Real Belt, but we have Aspinall at #1 because he has actually fought and defeated a bunch of Heavyweights. We’re at an incredibly weird moment for ranking the sport, because historically, rankings disputes have come down to challenges from other organizations, but with Bellator dead, the PFL still figuring out how their own championships work and ONE trying to push their MMA divisions into a shallow grave, for the first time, we have disputes coming from the UFC screwing up their own rankings.

The weirdness at the periphery of the sport only adds to it. I still have Francis Ngannou as my #1 Heavyweight, but he hasn’t fought a top ten mixed martial artist in three years and there’s a very good chance he never will again. I have Dakota Ditcheva ranked above all but three of the UFC’s Women’s Flyweights and there’s a near-certainty she won’t get to fight any of those three women. There’s a lot of room for shared space and tied rankings given the impossibility of co-promotion.

The Bigoted Elephant In the Room

Eric: One thing we discussed behind the scenes is the Bryce Mitchell situation and how the UFC’s response to it by saying “we’re not gonna punish him, just pay us to watch him (possibly) get knocked out” is…a choice. Since our focus of the new rankings system is to have a discussion component, I feel like it’s worth mentioning that I chose to disqualify Mitchell from my rankings due to his remarks glazing Adolf Hitler and downplaying the holocaust. After the initial backlash, where even general nice guy Jan Blachowicz called him out, Mitchell did a sort of apology mostly by saying he’ll be more considerate when talking about the suffering of others.

My feelings on this are simply that, by saying what he said and downplaying something like the holocaust, Mitchell has disqualified himself from any sense of accolades/congratulations from the MMA community. Further complicating this is that Dana White mostly said the solution the UFC will go is to do nothing about it. These two elements, just make me very personally uneasy giving any sense of acknowledgement of Mitchell, or anyone else who does this sort of bullshit, which is more or less why I disqualified him.

I think another thing that plays into it is, as Carl and I discussed, MMA is rife with just…awful people. Sean Strickland being another example of someone I would call a bigot also being allowed to say deranged things without much in the way of punishment by the “league.” Israel Adesanya as well has made remarks that I find disgusting about transgender people in general and also faced zero consequences for their bigotry. I think, though that its fair to say the absolute most unforgivable thing for a fighter to say is that both Adolf Hitler was a good guy who wanted whats best for his country, and that the Holocaust didn’t happen. By saying what he said, Mitchell was simply crossing the biggest and boldest of red lines that, personally, I can’t go “OK this is bad but not enough to do something about.”

And that’s, ultimately, a failing on my part in a way as I seem to be allowing the likes of what Strickland and Adesanya say go unpunished. I think, ultimately, going forward I should hold all fighters to this same standard of: “If you’re a bigot, you don’t deserve to be ranked because bigotry should never be ignored.”

Carl: It’s funny, because I spend so much of my time writing about these people and the terrible things they say and do and yet I still rank them. Which is, categorically, not a great feeling.

To be clear, I don’t disagree with Eric’s idea. If anything, I wish it was a standard the world of combat sports would adopt wholesale. I miss the days of promotions at least pretending to care about respectability and the public perception of their fighters and product, but in the post-merger, post-Trump-worship world of the UFC, things have never been worse.

And every time I try to put my thoughts in order, I find myself going down memory lane about the whole thing. It’s nice to remember when the UFC had some expectation of responsibility, but at the same time: Remember when they made t-shirts about Jorge Masvidal suckerpunching people? Remember when Badr Hari was seemingly getting arrested for assault on a monthly basis and he was still getting booked by the biggest kickboxing organizations on the planet? Or Alexei Oleinik founding what became a far-right pro-Russian separatist militia in Ukraine that led to his being banned from entering his own native country and then he wound up in the UFC and we still thought Ezekiel chokes were really cool?

It’s all bad. The sport’s always been bad, ever since Gerard “No, It’s Going to be a Maze” Gordeau was in the first televised UFC fight in history. A long time ago, I had a project (that I swear I’ll finish one day) about the history of Pride Fighting Championships, and when I wrote about Joe Son, I wrote about his fighting career and about his history as a horrible predator, and I concluded it like this:

“Joe Son showed up once at the UFC and twice in Pride. I'm not leaving out any part of this history project, and that's why he's here. Let there be no veneration of the man implied by his presence, and let any memories of him be seeded with salt.”

I wish Bryce Mitchell wasn’t here. I wish Sean Strickland wasn’t here. I wish a bunch of fighters weren’t bigots. But they’re here, and so am I, and while I will never shut up about how awful they are, for me, personally, I would rather damn the sport by being honest about the totality of their presence, and damn myself a little for not turning away.

Eric: I agree with the sentiment that “it’s rotten down to the core” because, historically, yes MMA has been a pretty good place for terrible and awful people to just exist and espouse their bullshit. I think this is a conversation is important to have but we should probably put on the back burner until we have a non-text based way to discuss it or else this article will get super long. (nudge nudge, wink wink).