The hosts of The Hammer MMA Radio have been contributing to the UFC’s Official Fighter Rankings since its inception earlier this year. While the UFC have confirmed that these rankings may not necessarily impact their matchmaking, the three of us still put a lot of thought into our selection process at the conclusion of each event. Following each event we will be breaking down our thought process on a few of the relevant divisions right here at Last Word On Sports.
You can find our updated Rankings, as well as the overall UFC Rankings at http://www.ufc.com/rankings, all updated on the Monday immediately following every UFC event.
UFC 166: Velasquez vs. Dos Santos
Steve Jeffery: UFC 166 had three significant heavyweight fights on the main card, and while important developments occurred in all three fights, in the end our rankings remained the same as before.
Champion Cain Velazquez defeated #1 contender Junior Dos Santos again in a victory that may have secured him the title for a long while due to a lack of sufficiently threatening challengers. While Junior Dos Santos may have lost, his performance reinforced that there’s a big gap between these two men and the rest of the division.
Meanwhile, #3 Daniel Cormier beat currently unranked Roy Nelson with a solid performance but not impressively enough to pass #2 Fabricio Werdum who is next in line for a title fight and also handled Nelson easily when they met. Finally, Gabriel Gonzaga’s unlikely comeback continues with a knockout over prospect Shawn Jordan, and he will likely get a top ten opponent next.
Steve Jeffery: In what appears to be an unfortunate judging trend, an important Middleweight fight between #9 ranked Tim Boetsch and CB Dollaway really made our rankings difficult this week.
Our eyes told us that we saw a dominant victory for underdog Dollaway (even with a point deduction) that would have moved Dollaway into Boetsch’s spot, but apparently the judges couldn’t tell the two fighters apart and awarded The Barbarian the decision instead.
After much debate we decided to pop Dollaway into the #10 spot anyway (under Boetsch, but still a significant jump for an unranked fighter) because he obviously showed that he can handle a high quality opponent, and because as we noted last time, there aren’t currently any better choices for the #10 UFC middleweight.
Steve Jeffery: Just like the above-mentioned Middleweight fight, a strange judging decision at UFC 166 made our Women’s Bantamweight Rankings just as hard to reconcile this week.
UFC newcomers Sarah Kaufman (previously ranked #2 due to her impressive Strikeforce run) and Jessica Eye (previously unranked because she was competing as a non-Zuffa Flyweight) had an exciting and competitive fight that was a clear (at least to us) unanimous decision win for Kaufman.
While Eye looked good, and not out of place fighting someone in the top of the division, it doesn’t feel right to place her above a fighter that she didn’t seem to legitimately defeat. So we moved her right under Kaufman (who we know that she can at least hang with), and then both of them under the undefeated Cat Zingano because that’s really no crazier that the result of the fight itself.
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