I am flattered to be a member of the panel that contributes to the USA Today/SB Nation Consensus MMA Rankings, which are compiled monthly by Bloody Elbow's Richard Wade (one of the smartest and most decent people I've had the pleasure of meeting doing this) and distributed in print nationwide.  An effort at establishing the MMA community's overall mood, the rankings are gleaned from ballots submitted by multiple sources, including but not limited to Jordan Breen, Jim Genia, Dave Walsh over at Head Kick Legend and Leland Roling of BE.  I'm still kind of in shock that my ballot is included amongst theirs - from a commentator no one knew two years ago to (hopefully) seeing my Serbian name gracing the pages of the nation's most printed newspaper.  Only in America, baby.

I believe these rankings to be the best system out there right now for letting casual fans glance and get an accurate view of the landscape - or, as Winston Churchill once said of democracy, "the worst system in the world, except for all the other ones."  It's akin to not limiting yourself to one cable channel or website for news - everyone is biased in some way, so it's better to hear multiple voices on the same issue.  With all of that said, describing our collective rankings as "consensus" is a corruption of the language - they are anything but.  Sometimes, the end result leaves my head scratching as to how my name got attached to them, beyond the shock I alluded to above.  Reviewing the material that will form the division-specific part of this piece - graciously submitted to me by  Richard Wade - made me nostalgic for a time when WAMMA needed to be discredited as a parasitic attempt to muddy the waters of ranking MMA.

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A new month is time for a fresh start and thus, I've decided to start up our own set of rankings for the 5 major divisions. Since this is the first set of rankings, we'll just focus on the top 10 in each of the 7 major division with expansion coming in subsequent months. The ranking system is complex computerized software that takes into account recent record, strength of schedule, talent and other factors.

Heavyweight

1. Brock Lesnar
2. Fedor Emelianenko
3. Cain Velasquez
4. Fabricio Werdum
5. Junior Dos Santos
6. Alistair Overeem
7. Shane Carwin
8. Frank Mir
9. Antonio Silva
10. Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira

More rankings after the jump

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Josh Gross seems upset about statements made last week on Bill Simmons' podcast when the topic turned towards fighter rankings.  After being reminded of Fedor Emelianenko's No. 3 P4P ranking on both Yahoo! Sports and Sherdog, White has this to say:

"He's not even the best heavyweight in the world. To put him on the pound-for-pound list. I think some of these guys don't even know what pound-for-pound means. It's just so disrespectful to all the other fighters it's crazy."

"Most of these goofy MMA sites, what you have to understand is, these guys are in it for the money. They get paid from all the smaller promotions. They get paid a lot of money from the smaller promotions. So they feel like they have to put some of their guys. That's the way it works. It's sick and drives me crazy."

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Just a few weeks ago the MMA-verse was bracing itself for a battle of promotions in Nashville, Tennessee of all places. But this week it appears that the battle will end with whimper rather than a bang (note: that doesn't mean the "war" is over, which started the second the UFC began countering every Strikeforce show with a replay).

The prevailing view within the MMA community is that the UFC will not go forth with a rival show on April 17^th. While the promotion has made inquires with Spike and venues there hasn't been the same push from a fight stand point. Also, Zuffa is running out of time to book an event in Nashville (note: they could still do it in Vegas).

Michael David Smith states that this may be the UFC simply messing with Strikeforce and trying to create uncertainty around the card.

Fightlinker thinks the UFC's disappearance from April 17th has more to do with the lack of a quality fight to headline the purported card. Ironic considering that the great injury blight created the backlog of talent, which is now all scheduled for this spring thus not allowing true flexibility or availability with the promotions talent. It should be noted that the only time the UFC ran a true counter show was during Affliction's pay-per view debut. WKR thinks there is a potential X factor that is important to point out-CBS.

Currently no one is quite sure what the network will do from a promotion stand point. If the UFC went forth with a date on the seventeenth WKR believes that a counter event would make it far more likely that CBS would run more, not less, promotional material during the NCAA tournament. Such an event would give the executives at CBS who believe in MMA ammunition to argue for more involvement not less. Four weeks of commercials may be enough to create a relatively large cross over audience, which creates its own risk for Zuffa. How the counter event would be perceived if it had a significant fight but was beaten by CBS. What would the narrative be if the promotion went with a second-tier draw and was soundly beaten in the ratings department? These are all unknowns but the potential volatility may have given Zuffa pause from pulling the trigger (note: for more listen to the second half of today's podcast).

Besides Scott Coker said he wanted to help out the WEC and Reed Harris by not putting fights on CBS the same night. The people over at Zuffa had to notice that, right? People at the UFC have to have a heart, right?

Here at Watch Kalib Run we thought it would be a great idea to expand our MMA coverage by offering monthly rankings. Don't confuse these with USA Today/SB Nation's Consensus Rankings, which reflect the views from the entire MMA community. Plus those are attached to USA Today and newspapers don't like us.

These rankings are an attempt to inform our readers what the WKR writers are thinking when it comes to each division so when we make outrageous claims you will now know what we are "thinking".

All of WKR writers submitted their top-ten list as well as potential "Breakout Fighters" who could be breaking in to the top-ten in the next year.

Note: Each fighter's ranking from last month can be seen in parentheses.

Continue reading this post »

Here at Watch Kalib Run we thought it would be a great idea to expand our MMA coverage by offering monthly rankings. Don't confuse these with USA Today/SB Nation's Consensus Rankings, which reflect the views from the entire MMA community. Plus those are attached to USA Today and newspapers don't like us.

These rankings are an attempt to inform our readers what the WKR writers are thinking when it comes to each division so when we make outrageous claims you will now know what we are "thinking".

All of WKR writers submitted their top-ten list as well as potential "Breakout Fighters" who could be breaking in to the top-ten in the next year.

Note: Each fighter's ranking from last month can be seen in parentheses.

Continue reading this post »

Here at Watch Kalib Run we thought it would be a great idea to expand our MMA coverage by offering monthly rankings. Don't confuse these with USA Today/SB Nation's Consensus Rankings, which reflect the views from the entire MMA community. Plus those are attached to USA Today and newspapers don't like us.

These rankings are an attempt to inform our readers what the WKR writers are thinking when it comes to each division so when we make outrageous claims you will now know what we are "thinking".

All of WKR writers submitted their top-ten list as well as potential "Breakout Fighters" who could be breaking in to the top-ten in the next year.

Note: Each fighter's ranking from last month can be seen in parentheses.

Continue reading this post »

Here at Watch Kalib Run we thought it would be a great idea to expand our MMA coverage by offering monthly rankings. Don't confuse these with USA Today/SB Nation's Consensus Rankings, which reflect the views from the entire MMA community. Plus those are attached to USA Today and newspapers don't like us.

These rankings are an attempt to inform our readers what the WKR writers are thinking when it comes to each division so when we make outrageous claims you will now know what we are "thinking".

All of WKR writers submitted their top-ten list as well as potential "Breakout fighters" who could be breaking in to the top-ten in the next year.

Note: Each fighter's ranking from last month can be seen in parentheses.

Continue reading this post »