Year End Rankings for 2023
Neal and Carl continue their contrarian ways
This is our last ranking post for 2023 and our first since November 2.
MMA since then has been well
But we persevere.
I’m going to format this one a bit differently from the previous ones, giving year-end remarks on each division, but here’s our usual preamble.
Carl ranks based on his qualitative assessment of the fighters; I rank quantitatively based on their performances and results. This leaves us with a weirdly happy medium.
We’ve been talking to some of our fightis.land colleagues about getting more people involved in the rankings.
Eligibility criteria:
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.
Men’s Rankings
125 Lbs.
Alexandre Pantoja
Brandon Moreno
Amir Albazi
Brandon Royval
Matheus Nicolau
Manel Kape
Kai Kara-France
Jarred Brooks
Muhammad Mokaev
Steve Erceg
Bruno Silva
Joshua Pacio
David Dvorak
Tim Elliott
Tagir Ulanbekov
What to say about flyweight? The fights here kick ass and it went out with a bang in the Pantoja-Royval fight. There are two challenges in ranking this division: the low promotional profile of the fighters, and the cut-throat neck-and-neck degree of the competition. Everyone right now seems to have wins over everyone else.
135 Lbs.
Sean O'Malley
Merab Dvalishvili
Cory Sandhagen
Aljamain Sterling
Marlon Vera
Petr Yan
Patchy Mix
Demetrious Johnson
Deiveson Figueiredo
Yadong Song
Sergio Pettis
Jonathan Martinez
Rob Font
Raufeon Stots
Mario Bautista
Speaking of cut-throat, 135 had our biggest streak of ties: Sandhagen and Sterling were tied, and then Vera, Yan, and Mix had a three-way tie. The first criterion - wins over currently ranked competition at the weight class - separated them. If I were ranking qualitatively, Merab would be#1, and I’m perpetually tempted to put him there, but I didn’t. Apparently I rate Patchy much higher than Carl does.
By and by, “wins over currently ranked competition at this weight class” is actually a very good point to examine: few fighters have more than two. Featherweight has a good example…
145 Lbs.
Alexander Volkanovski
Max Holloway
Arnold Allen
Ilia Topuria
Yair Rodriguez
Fabricio Andrade
Movsar Evloev
Josh Emmett
Patricio Pitbull
Bryce Mitchell
Edson Barboza
John Lineker
Dan Ige
Muhammad Naimov
Stephen Loman
I had to break our own elegibility rule here because Volkanovski has been getting KOed at 155, but we’re taking it on his scout’s honour that he’ll be returning. Max Holloway has an argument right now for being #1 in the world.
Anyway: would you believe that Yair Rodriguez has only one ranked win (Emmett)? Everyone else he has beaten is retired (Zombie, Edgar), or inactive (Ortega). That’s how hard those are to get and keep.
155 Lbs.
Islam Makhachev
Charles Oliveira
Justin Gaethje
Arman Tsarukyan
Dustin Poirier
Mateusz Gamrot
Rafael Fiziev
Beneil Dariush
Usman Nurmagomedov
Michael Chandler
Jalin Turner
Benoit St. Denis
Elves Brener
Brent Primus
Bobby Green
155 has long been logjammed at the top, but Tsarukyan and Gaethje teamed up to finally cause some movement there late this year. The lower end of the division has also had some interesting activity, with long boy Jailin Turner, brawler Benoit St. Denis, and dark horse Elves Brener making arguments for legitimacy.
170 Lbs.
Leon Edwards
Belal Muhammad
Shavkat Rakhmonov
Jason Jackson
Gilbert Burns
Stephen Thompson
Yaroslav Amosov
Kamaru Usman
Jack Della Maddalena
Ian Machado Garry
Logan Storley
Geoff Neal
Vicente Luque
Sean Brady
Neil Magny
170 is where we start to see some of the travesties of the UFC’s rankings. No Colby. He wasn’t ranked going into his title fight - he went over a year without a fight firmly booked - and he has no wins for years, and right now, no career wins over active welterweights. There’s no case for ranking him. Technically Kamaru should be dropped because he fought at 185 but I’m not changing it at this point. Belal should have fought for a title this December. Shavkat has earned an opportunity. JDlaM (who I rate highly and Carl doesn’t) is poised to leapfrog them with a win over Gilbert Burns (who we both rate lower, but the UFC doesn’t). I wonder why?
185 Lbs.
Sean Strickland
Dricus du Plessis
Israel Adesanya
Johnny Eblen
Robert Whittaker
Jared Cannonier
Marvin Vettori
Roman Dolidze
Derek Brunson
Brendan Allen
Jack Hermansson
Khamzat Chimaev
Roman Kopylov
Fabian Edwards
Gegard Mousasi
More messy stuff. I didn’t rank Khamzat - in my opinion his beating a welterweight on short notice doesn’t tell us where he stands at middleweight. Sean Strickland is clearly an inferior fighter to Johnny Eblen and Robert Whittaker, at least in a frictionless vaccuum, but he has the wins to take that top spot.
For a division that has such a big gap between “The Good Fighters” and the rest, it has a pretty solid top strata though.
205 Lbs.
Alex Pereira
Magomed Ankalaev
Jamahal Hill
Jan Blachowicz
Vadim Nemkov
Corey Anderson
Johnny Walker
Nikita Krylov
Volkan Oezdemir
Khalil Rountree Jr.
Azamat Murzakanov
Phil Davis
Ryan Spann
Alonzo Menifield
Carlos Ulberg
We gave Pereira the #1 spot. Ankalaev held it last time above Hill, but he took home a draw and an NC, where Pereira managed to get the win. Where do we insert Jiri after such a severe injury, layoff, and loss? That’s a tough question. And hoo boy does this division drop off hard after the top strata. It would really help assess world MMA to see Nemkov fight someone who has recent contact with the UFC ecosystem.
265 Lbs. (Heavyweight)
Tom Aspinall
Jon Jones
Ciryl Gane
Sergei Pavlovich
Curtis Blaydes
Alexander Volkov
Sergey Spivac
Ryan Bader
Linton Vassell
Jailton Almeida
Phil De Fries
Anatoly Malykhin
Marcin Tybura
Tai Tuivasa
Alexander Romanov
What a waste of time and attention the Jon Jones Heavyweight experiment has been. I barely want to rank him at all, but he does have that win over Gane, and I’m going to kick him so fast once the eligibility rolls over because he is never fighting any ranked fighter ever again.
Conversely, N’Gannou is going back in at my #1 the instant he gets a 2024 MMA win. His performance against Fury has convinced me - yes, it’s a different sport, but when a guy who has made the case that he’s one of the best all-arounders makes a case that he can also hang with the best specialist on the planet, you sit up and listen.
Women’s Rankings
105 + 108 Lbs. combined (Atomweight)
Seika Izawa
Si Woo Park
Jillian DeCoursey
Kanna Asakura
Si Yoon Park
Ayaka Hamasaki
Saori Oshima
Arisa Matsuda
Machi Fukuda
Ayaka Watanabe
Satomi Takano
Mina Kurobe
Monique Adriane
Elisandra Ferreira
Marisa Messer-Belenchia
Seika Izawa is very good. If we did wP4P rankings, she’d be near the top, but P4P rankings are extremely dumb beyond use as a rhetorical device.
Sadly, we’re thinking about dropping Atomweight rankings because we’re not confident about our ability to say anything about them. It’s a shame, because Izawa is that good, and she deserves better promotional eyes, but it’s basically impossible to watch competitive atomweights outside of Japanese TV, and the top one outside of that (our former #2, Rayanne Dos Santos / Rayanne Amanda) just lost a split decision against a UFC strawweight on the undercard of UFC Fight Night: Song vs. Gutiérrez, the fate of so many Invicta Atomweight champs. For my part, I actaully don’t submit a complete list and most of these are Carl’s.
115 Lbs.
Weili Zhang
Xiaonan Yan
Amanda Lemos
Tatiana Suarez
Virna Jandiroba
Jessica Andrade
Marina Rodriguez
Stamp Fairtex
Mackenzie Dern
Carla Esparza
Lupita Godinez
Seo Hee Ham
Angela Hill
Tabatha Ricci
Amanda Ribas
This is the only women’s division that feels healthy right now: there’s competition, good fights, people moving up and down. It’s a shame that the UFC is doing as much as it can right now to smother it, too. Where’s our all-China title fight? Book it, damnit. Keep things happening.
Unfortunately, it only gets worse from here.
125 Lbs.
Alexa Grasso
Valentina Shevchenko
Erin Blanchfield
Manon Fiorot
Liz Carmouche
Maycee Barber
Taila Santos
Viviane Araujo
Natalia Silva
Xiong Jing Nan
Tracy Cortez
Jennifer Maia
Katlyn Chookagian
Karine Silva
Lauren Murphy
Don’t get me wrong, there are some good fights and fighters here too, but the problem with 125 is that nobody knows who the hell fights at 125. Women move in and out of this division, especially to/from 115, as if it’s all one pool of fighters. That betrays a real problem with matchmaking and availability of fights going on in the UFC, if former champs like Jessica Andrade or mid-range contenders like Amanda Ribas are risking their careers to bounce what would be four weight classes in boxing.
135 Lbs.
Raquel Pennington
Mayra Bueno Silva
Irene Aldana
Holly Holm
Pannie Kianzad
Talita Bernardo
Taneisha Tennant
Ketlen Vieira
Olga Rubin
Ketlen Viera
Yana Santos
Karol Rosa
Joselyn Edwards
Macy Chiasson
Julija Stoliarenko
And what is going on here? This was at one time the flagship women’s division and it’s now a compost heap. I do not mean any disrespect to Raquel Pennington - I’m a fan, in fact. But she’s a ghost, promotionally, and that’s zero percent her fault. At least we have a fight for a vacant title with Mayra Bueno Silva lined up, but I’m pessimistic that the promotional situation will improve with the SEO/LLM optimized trash that the UFC produces at this point.
We want to get excited for WMMA. I like WMMA. I paid for pre-UFC Invicta cards. I wrote a decade in review article that identified WMMA as the story of the twenty-teens. All anyone needs to do is pay the fighters to train like the pros they are and put on the fights and let us know that they’re happening.
Here’s where my optimistic editorial fits in:
145 Lbs.
Cris Cyborg
Norma Dumont
Cat Zingano
Larissa Pacheco
Leah McCourt
Sara McMann
Arlene Blencowe
Josiane Nunes
Olena Kolesnyk
Sara Collins
Sinead Kavanaugh
Julia Budd
Ekaterina Shakalova
Aspen Ladd
Chelsea Chandler
I feel that the long-term hope of WMMA is hidden in this list. Cyborg has for a long time put a downward pressure on the competitive classes in WMMA as women moved down to 135 to find different competition, and then onward. But she’s on her way out of the sport. Once she retires, I expect that weight cutting could slow and women will drift back up.
If the fighters get paid and treated like pros.
Larissa Pacheco is an interesting case here, her last performance not held against her (they can’t all be zingers), because she’s a great example of how a fighter who makes enough money to train properly can improve. Years ago she got trounced at Bantamweight by Jessica Andrade, then washed out on TUF. Now she’s one of the top-paid female athletes in the entire world, outside of tennis.
If Cyborg is so good, why doesn’t that payday get her in the ring?