Rankings: Quarter 3, 2025

The march through 2025 continues, and the rankings are settling down a tiny bit.

Eric

and

Carl Cohen

Oct 02, 2025

All rankings shown were submitted on September 28, 2025.

We are back with the third quarter of rankings for 2025 and while there have been a few shake ups in who sits where, most of the top rankings are relatively the same as in the previous quarter. This isn’t surprising given at that end of the division, activity tends to slow down as most organizations try to sort out a schedule for the title shots. That or the UFC just forgets they have a bunch of top talent waiting for a title shot and give Sean O’Malley his seventh attempt at beating Merab Dvalishvili.

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.