Rankings: Quarter 2, 2025
The rankings have shaken up quite a bit, and the gang sort out who is at the top.
We are back with our second quarter of rankings in 2025 and boy, a lot of people moved around in a way that it was hard to keep track of. We also would like to take the moment to, collectively, express happiness in not having to find any reason to justify why we don’t rank Jon Jones as the #1 Heavyweight anymore. He retired, then re-entered the testing pool within two weeks. That’s fine, but he lost his ranking spot as a result of his shenanigans. While the “retirement” may not be permanent, our disdain for him is. We wish him luck on whatever bullshit he tries to pull next.
All rankings shown were submitted on June 30, 2025.
Ranking Philosophies
A quick reminder 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
We have decided to drop the discussion section of our rankings posts. Instead we will be releasing companion podcasts of both Carl & Eric going over the rankings and having a free form conversation. This is mostly to allow for quicker turn around in publishing our rankings, as well as allow for an easier method of holding these conversations. Be on the look out for the upcoming podcast episode, hopefully released by the end of July.