All 83 Light Heavyweights to ever reach top 10 ranking

I put them in order with standings where 1st is 10pts, 2nd is 9pts, so on. (with 4 rankings per year)

If Jon Jones keeps up his pace he will reach 1st place in 3.5 years.

1. Tito Ortiz (250)
2. Wanderlei Silva (247)
3. Chuck Liddell (242)
4. Quinton Jackson (241)
5. Dan Henderson (233)
6. Mauricio Rua (227)
7. Rashad Evans (194)
8. Lyoto Machida (189)
9. Frank Shamrock (156)
10. Randy Couture (155)
Jon Jones (130)
Ricardo Arona (112)
Forrest Griffin (106)
Vitor Belfort (105)
Antonio Rogerio Nogueira
Paulo Filho
Yuki Kondo
Yoshinori Nishi
Alexander Gustafsson
Renzo Gracie
Jorge Pereira
Maxim Tarasov
Gegard Mousasi
Roberto Godoi
Murilo Bustamente
Allan Goes
Keith Jardine
Jerry Bohlander
Renato Sobral
Ryan Bader
Rameau Thierry Sokodojou
Guy Mezger
Jeremy Horn
David Paaluhi
Phil Davis
Sanae Kikuta
Kazushi Sakuraba
Enson Inoue
Anthony Macias
Joe Slick
Igor Zinoviev
John Renken
Matt Lindland
Glover Teixera
Tyrone Roberts
Alistair Overeem
Jason DeLucia
Keiichiro Yamamiya
Vladmir Matyushenko
Eugene Jackson
Kevin Jackson
Rich Franklin
Akira Shoji
Rick Graveson
John Lober
Everaldo Alle
Kevin Randleman
Paulo Alfonso
Chael Sonnen
Evan Tanner
Ikuhisa Minowa
Luiz Cane
Muhammed Lawal
Omar Bouiche
Kiyoshi Tamura
Mike Van Arsdale
Thiago Silva
Ismail Souza
Paul Jones
Bart Guyer
Daniel Cormier
Hiromitsu Kanehara
Alexander Otsuka
Artur Mariano
Brian Gassaway
Daisuke Ishii
George Allen
Ricardo Almeida
Vernon White
Chris Lytle
Kazuhiro Nakamura
Osami Shibuya
Yuki Sasaki

 

Really nice list, people should take this into account before they call guys like Cain the best ever.

 

Come on Rampage, one more point.

 

Rampage had a shot at dethroning Tito on this, but his chances are pretty slim outside of the UFC. I see him fighting for 2 more years, being ranked 9th at best.

 

Duuude, if Rampage can stay on the list for two years straight, with just one ranking over 10, he'd be ranked NUMBER 1 ULTIMATE BEST.

 

This is really interesting...would love to see this for other weight classes, heavyweight especially. Although we know Fedor will be #1, it will be interesting to see what Cain has to do to top him.

 

Lets go Rampage!!!

 

love it, thanks for sharing

 

Interesting to see the native warrior there, never had him pegged for top 10

 

I made a thread on it a while back, I'll make an updated version. Fedor is so ahead it's ridiculous from what I remember.

 

What is this list based on? George Allen top 10(never strung more than 3 wins together)? In what universe? Omar Bouiche (3-5)?... Bart Guyer (4-3) never won back to back fights... terrible list.

 

I didn't make up the rankings. Just took it from a website and added up the data. There weren't exactly many 205ers in 1999 buddy.

George Allen was 6-2 at one point with a win over one of his losses (Fulton)

Bouiche was 3-3 at one point with wins over respected Jason DeLucia and Minoru Suzuki.

Guyer was on the ranking when there were hardly 10 people to choose he was 3-2 in 1996.
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anyways the point of the list is to see the people at the top and it just shows how long fighters dominated and the fact that Jon Jones has a ways to go in terms of time spent in the top 10 to be considered the greatest LHW of all time.

in the '90s, many fights were at openweight so guys that would be LHW today were basically fighting at heavyweight. promotions with a set 205 division were rare so the 3 you mentioned slipped into the rankings

 

Great post here.

 

You took them from Fight Matrix who's formula is complete garbage. Some of these guys were "top 10" because there weren't even 10 people in the division it's a joke.

 

How many of these guys fought for the UFC, out of curiosities sake

 

I'm counting about 60 fought at least once in the UFC though Renzo, Reem and probably alot more didn't fight in the ufc at 205 some were probably openweight and some like Enson, Bohlander when 2 divisions.

 

I would love to see this for all divisions

 

Nice one TS, thanks! Pretty interesting.

 

Thank you! Some names I don't recognize on that list so I was pretty curious

 

Kind of a useless list if you ask me since in the 90s there were barely any decent fighters let alone enough fighters to fill a top 10. And there's way more to it than simply time spent in the top 10 to be considered GOAT. The quality of opposition comes to mind