USAT/SBN September MMA Consensus Rankings: Heavyweight
| Rank | Fighter | % | Promotion | Last Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Brock Lesnar | 99 | UFC | 1 |
| 2 | Fedor Emelianenko | 90 | M-1 / Strikeforce | 2 |
| 3 | Cain Velasquez | 87 | UFC | 4 |
| 4 | Fabricio Werdum | 87 | Strikeforce | 3 |
| 5 | Shane Carwin | 85 | UFC | 5 |
| 6 | Junior dos Santos | 83 | UFC | 6 |
| 7 | Frank Mir | 78 | UFC | 7 |
| 8 | Alistair Overeem | 75 | Strikeforce | 8 |
| 9 | Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira | 70 | UFC | 9 |
| 10 | Josh Barnett | 54 | Strikeforce | 11 |
| 11 | Brett Rogers | 50 | Strikeforce | 12 |
| 12 | Antonio Silva | 50 | Strikeforce | 10 |
| 13 | Gabriel Gonzaga | 42 | UFC | 13 |
| 14 | Cheick Kongo | 33 | UFC | 14 |
| 15 | Mirko Filipovic | 28 | UFC | 15 |
| 16 | Andrei Arlovski | 27 | Strikeforce | 16 |
| 17 | Roy Nelson | 24 | UFC | 19 |
| 18 | Pedro Rizzo | 23 | Impact Fighting Championship | 17 |
| 19 | Aleksander Emelianenko | 23 | Azerbaijan Pankration Federation | 17 |
| 20 | Ben Rothwell | 21 | UFC | 21 |
| 21 | Tim Sylvia | 20 | Powerhouse World Promotions | 20 |
| 22 | Randy Couture | 14 | UFC | 22 |
| 23 | Stefan Struve | 11 | UFC | 23 |
| 24 | Mike Russow | 11 | UFC | 25 |
| 25 | Jeff Monson | 10 | Knuckle Up MMA | 24 |
Rankings compiled by Richard Wade.
Consider this the calm before the storm. September was nearly a dead zone for Heavyweight MMA, but Brocktober, er I mean October, will be stacked.
#1 Brock Lesnar will defend his UFC heavyweight title against #3 Cain Velasquez at UFC 121 on October 23.
That card will also feature gatekeeper #13 Gabriel Gonzaga doing his thing against unranked up and comer Brendan Schaub.
Strikeforce hasn't been able to do a thing with their heavyweights. #3 Fedor Emelianenko is "working on his contract" and may fight in January.
SF Champ #8 Alistair Overeem will be spending the fall fighting for kickboxing promotion K-1. #12 Antonio "Big Foot" Silva will settle for Overeem's brother Valentijn in December. #4 Fabricio Werdum is out with an injury and will return some time in 2011. No word on when or who new Strikeforce signee #10 Josh Barnett will fight first. Personally I think Barnett makes the most sense for the final fight on Fedor's contract. Overeem would be the ideal but that seems unlikely to happen.
#18 Pedro Rizzo and #21 Tim Sylvia are expected to meet in a "ex-champs that time forgot" bout for PWP promotions. Sylvia in particular will have a strong case for moving back up to a major promotion with a win over Rizzo.
The only notable heavyweight action in September featured #7 Frank Mir against #15 Mirko "Cro Cop" Filipovic. Sadly that fight's predictable outcome didn't impact the rankings at all.
Based on the premise that all MMA rankings are subjective but that it’s still useful and informative to know who the online MMA community as a whole ranks as the best fighters in MMA, we collect and average the rankings of the top MMA websites to produce our consensus rankings. We compile the top MMA rankings from each of our sources and award 25 points for a first place ranking, 16 for a 10th place ranking, 1 for a 25th place ranking. A formula is used to "normalize" the data so all fighters are awarded points from those lists that do not include a full 25 fighters. This formula ensures that each ranking site awards the same number of total points regardless of how many fighters they choose to rank. Each fighter’s total is divided by the number of possible points to determine their standing in the Consensus Rankings.
We are now moving to what JCS of Fight Matrix has described as assumed rankings in an attempt to rank fighters who move between weight classes. This has been the biggest problem with the consensus rankings and we believe this new methodology will rectify that.
Let's take Anderson Silva for instance. 87% (13 of 15) of our panelists have him at Light Heavyweight and 100% (15 of 15) at Middleweight. On the 13 ballots that ranked Silva at 205, we took the average (21.2). We then reduced that number by half the percentage of Light Heavyweight ballots that he was not included on. Say he's not on 30% of them, then we do a 15% penalty on the average that we found in the previous step. That number is then used instead of the usual "normalization number" to provide points from those not ranking the fighter in the weight class in question. This avoids fighters being excessively penalized by confusion about which weight class they belong.