All Time rankings - Top 30 for each Division

[zec1234]

In the next posts I will give All Time ranking for each Weight Category.
You can probably argue for multiple fighters that they should be ranked in another category, but I have them ranked in one that is closest to their natural weight.

Also, maybe you would like to see some current top fighters to be ranked much higher. But you have to consider how extensive their overall career is compared to some older fighters.
Fighters that are currently ranked high in the Current Ranking, will add a lot of new ATT points in next year or two. So, they will probably move up in All Time rankings in the near future.

 

[zec1234]

To create All Time Rankings we use calculated All Time Total (ATT) Score.
AllTimeTotal score is a number that describes fighter's overall career MMA achievements.
Fighters build their legacy through fighting top opponents, winning, reaching high rankings and staying on the top as long as they can.
We use almost 100 different measures for each fighter. All those measures are used to calculate final Career ATT score.
This score is changing throughout fighter's career. ATT score is mostly going up. That ATT increase is much slower at the end of career.
At the end of each quarter fighters get additional points based on their ranking.

Most fighters were fighting opponents from multiple weight categories. Many fighters repeatedly go up and down in weight. That is why we calculate just one ATT score, and not separate for each category.

For example, Dan Henderson had number of fights versus HW fighters. He was also very good at LHW. But he is natural MW, and we will put him into that list.
Even if it is possible to precisely split each of his achievement into 3 separate categories, it wouldn't be right to have his ATT score divided into 3 parts. If we remove HW and LHW fights from Dan's score, then he would be ranked behind Nate Marquardt and Rich Franklin.

 

[BayAreaGuy]

Fedor. 10 years undefeated. Never fought safe either.

 

[zec1234]

HW All Time Top 30

Fedor is the best HW of all times, and there is no HW that can pass him in next couple of years. He has the longest tenure at #1 HW (27 quarters). Having the most wins over opponents in the Ctg top 5 (9 wins) shows that he has wins over all top HW from his period.
He is still active, but considering level of his recent opponents, he will not increase his ATT by much.

Big Nog will no longer be fighting and his ATT score will not change. He has the most wins over Opponents from top 50 P4P (26).

Randy Couture is one of the first HW champions and has the most championship points (47 championship points include both HW and LHW). He was always having top opponents (16 opponents ranked in Ctg top 5).

Cain Velasquez moved into top 5 All Time HW with less than 10 years of MMA professional experience. 6 years (out of those 10) he was ranked in the top 5 HW. And in 15 quarters he was #1 HW. He is also the only top 5 HW that was never ranked #1 P4P.
With two more high level wins, he could pass Randy to become #3.

Bas Rutten is a real MMA pioneer (first fight in 1993). He was ranked in top 10 P4P for more than 6 years and has 25 wins over top 50 P4P.

Fabricio Werdum had some huge wins, but was never able to stay in the top rankings for a longer time. His best P4P ranking is #5.
He will most likely pass Bas some time next year.

Mirko Filipovic also had some big wins, but was never ranked #1 HW.
Josh Barnett has one of the longest MMA careers and many positive and negative things happened (was UFC champion, tested positive).

Junior dos Santos is in the top 10 with less than 10 years of professional fighting. Since he is currently ranked high, he will soon move to #7.

Alistair Overeem has huge amount of fights (56), but not so many wins over high level opponents. That is why he was ranked in top 10 P4P only once.

Mark Hunt has the worst win % here. But a lot of of his opponents were ranked high. He has 9 opponents that were in the Ctg top 5, and he defeated just 2 of them.

Stipe Miocic has the least experience of all on this list. His next title defense can bring him a lot of new points. And defeat might push him couple of spots down.

It is interesting that we have 4 Duch fighters in top 30 All Time HW.

 

[zec1234]

In the ranking tables I also show some measures that we calculate and use to create final ATT score.
Here is explanation for each column in those tables:

• rk - Ranking in Weight Category
• AT rank - Overall All Time Ranking
• ATT Score - All Time Total Score
• chmp Pts - Championship Points
• fight years - number of Years between first and last fight
• cOp RP10 - count Opponents Ranked in top 10 P4P
• cOp RC5 - count Opponents Ranked in top 5 in Category
• wOp RC5 - wins over Opponents Ranked in top 5 in Category
• wOp RP50 - wins over Opponents Ranked in top 50 P4P
• topRk P4P - best P4P Ranking
• top10 P4P - number of quarters Ranked in top 10 P4P
• topRk Ctg - best Category Ranking
• cRk1 Ctg - number of quarters Ranked #1 in Category
• top5 Ctg - number of quarters Ranked in Category top 5

 

[zec1234]

LHW All Time Top 30

Despite his continues problems outside of actual fights, Jon Jones is unquestionable #1 LHW of all time.
He has the most championship points and he won all 7 fights with Ctg top 5 opponents. The only official loss should probably be treated as NC.

Wanderlei Silva has a huge number of wins over top 50 P4P opponents (25).
Chuck Liddell was in top 5 LHW the longest (27 quarters).

Ken Shamrock has the longest career (22 years), but only first few years he had a real success.
Igor Vovchanchyn has the most wins over top 50 P4P opponents (30).

Top 10 All Time LHW ranking most likely will not change this year.

We might have Daniel Cormier moving into top 10. Almost all top 10 are either inactive or close to the end of their career.

 

[zec1234]

MW All Time Top 30

Two MW that are on the top right now will stay there for a long time. Dan Henderson might go over 2,000 ATT points, but has no way to get close to Anderson.
Dan fought by far the strongest opponents - he had 21 opponents ranked in Ctg Top 5 (just 8 wins over them) and 29 opponents from top 50 P4P (opponents from WW to HW).

Lyoto Machida had a lot of success at LHW (he would be ranked #5 at LHW), but he is natural MW. He is fighting at MW right now and his early career was marked by wins over BJ Penn and Rich Franklin.

Vitor Belfort is another example of natural MW that was fighting at HW and LHW. He was never ranked #1 in any weight category.

Chris Weidman is ranked very high on the All Time MW list considering he has less than 7 years of MMA.

Rich Franklin was UFC MW champion, but he has just 1 win over opponent ranked in Ctg top 5.

Some people consider Kazushi Sakuraba to be one of the greatest MMA fighters. But he has the worst win % on this list. He was a top fighter for 3 years (even ranked #1 P4P at one point), but the rest of his career he was mostly a punching bag for mediocre opponents.

 

[ZackZed]

Why is Gilbert Yvel ranked so high? All he did was choke against the bests and KO a ref.
Other than that, can't wait to see the rest. Way better than fightmatrix's AT rankings.

 

[zec1234]

Why is Gilbert Yvel ranked so high? All he did was choke against the bests and KO a ref.
Other than that, can't wait to see the rest. Way better than fightmatrix's AT rankings.

Thanks for looking deep into rankings.
Gilbert Yvel has wins over Pedro Rizzo, Semmy Schilt, Cheick Kongo, Tsuyoshi Kosaka x2, Carlos Barreto, Gary Goodridge, Valentijn Overeem x2.
He started in 1997 and won first 9 fights.
On January 1, 2000 he was ranked #5 HW in the world with record 19-3.
He was Rings HW champion when that organization had fighters like Big Nog, Dan Henderson, Fedor, Alistair Overeem, Semmy Schilt.

 

[zec1234]

WW All Time Top 30

GSP and Hughes will keep their #1 and #2 WW All Time rankings for a long time. There is nobody that can come even close. Two of them were on the top of WW division for almost 13 years.

Robbie Lawler split his 15 years of MMA almost equally between WW and MW.

Hayato Sakurai was #1 WW for 10 quarters (before Matt Hughes era).

Royce Gracie is a natural WW, but his best days where in the open weight era when he was fighting mostly LHW and HW.

Tyron Woodley, new WW champion, is not even in top 10. He is the only one on this list with less than 8 years of pro MMA.

 

[zec1234]

LW All Time Top 30

 

[zec1234]

BJ Penn has by far the best ATT score among LW fighters. He is the only one on this list that was ranked #1 P4P.
He also has one of the worst win %. But that is because almost 70% of his fights were with opponents ranked in top 5.
Another anomaly with BJ is that he was fighting in 4 different weight categories (from FW to MW).

Frankie Edgar is a natural FW, but he has much better results at LW then at FW.

Takanori Gomi has the most wins (17) over top50 P4P opponents. He spent the longest at the top of LW division (4.5 years). He also has the most losses in LW All Time top 10.

Benson Henderson has the most championship points (combined UFC and WEC championship fights).

Gilbert Melendez was the first WEC LW champion and 8 time Strikeforce champion.

Shinya Aoki has the most wins (39) in top 10, but just 3 of them were over opponents in top5.

Khabib Nurmagomedov is the only fighter on all top 30 All Time lists that has perfect win %. But he has just one fight with top 5.

 

[zec1234]

FW All Time Top 30

 

[zec1234]

Jose Aldo is All Time king of FW division. He was #1 FW for more than 8 years (cRk1Ctg=25 quarters). He fought 11 top 5 opponents (cOpRC5=11) and defeated 10 of them (wOpRC5=10). Aldo is the only FW that was ever ranked #1 P4P (topRkP4P=1).

Most of top 10 FW on this list can arguably be listed in some other weight category.

Urijah Faber is a natural BW, but his most successful period was in WEC FW division. This is similar to Edgar in LW. He has the most top 5 opponents (cOpRC5=13), but not too many wins (wOpRC5=5).

Tatsuya Kawajiri,Jens Pulver, Caol Uno,Joachim Hansen - they all had a good success at LW, but are natural FW. Problem is that for a long time LW division was much more popular than FW.
Jens Pulver was the first UFC LW champion.
Caol Uno was Shooto LW champion in 1999 and was fighting for the first UFC LW title.
Tatsuya Kawajiri and Joachim Hansen were Shooto and DREAM LW champion.

Shooto was organization that first started with FW division. Kazuhiro Sakamoto (1991) and Noboru Asahi (1992, 1999) where early FW Shooto champions.
Alexandre Franca Nogueira won Shoto FW title fights 7 times

Conor McGregor with win next week might move all the way up to #4. And if he defends FW title once, he would move to #3.

 

[Dana_is_your_GOD]

In the next posts I will give All Time ranking for each Weight Category.
You can probably argue for multiple fighters that they should be ranked in another category, but I have them ranked in one that is closest to their natural weight.

Also, maybe you would like to see some current top fighters to be ranked much higher. But you have to consider how extensive their overall career is compared to some older fighters.
Fighters that are currently ranked high in the Current Ranking, will add a lot of new ATT points in next year or two. So, they will probably move up in All Time rankings in the near future.

I want a complete list from you brah.

Top 50 and from each era. Then also alphabetized.

Get to work brah.

 

[zec1234]

...

 

[Clippy]

 

[Ez Eric]

It is scary how similar these rankings are to my personal rankings. It is nice to see numbers back it up. Newer fans these days seriously underrate Big Nog and BJ Penn and it is good to see them ranked where they are at.

It is weird to see Junior Dos Santos as low as he is but like you said he could move to 7 and eventually higher. His career is not done yet and neither are Overeem, RDA, Alvarez and Khabib. I think those guys may eventually move even higher with a few more wins and big fights. I think they all will be looked at as all time greats in a few years.

 

[zec1234]

It is scary how similar these rankings are to my personal rankings. It is nice to see numbers back it up. Newer fans these days seriously underrate Big Nog and BJ Penn and it is good to see them ranked where they are at.

It is weird to see Junior Dos Santos as low as he is but like you said he could move to 7 and eventually higher. His career is not done yet and neither are Overeem, RDA, Alvarez and Khabib. I think those guys may eventually move even higher with a few more wins and big fights. I think they all will be looked at as all time greats in a few years.

You reminded me to make two points about All Time rankings

1. They are not final. New fighters will go up. Some of them will go up quickly.

2. Don't forget your history. Current champions should be remembered and respected in 2030. So we should respect and remember champions from 1990's.


JDS and Cain are only HW from top 15 that are in MMA less than 10 years. They will for sure go up in this ranking. How far? It depends on their future results.

 

[zec1234]

Similar All TIme Rankings for BW and Flyweight will be added in the next post.

Let me know if you have any question or you think something doesn't look right.