Announcing retirement trigger immediate removal from the rankings

Should announcing retirement trigger immediate removal of a fighter from the rankings?

Most of the sites are removing fighters from the rankings when they announce retirement.
But should they stay there for a while? Especially because often that is not a real retirement.


I would argue against automatic removal from rankings.
Let the time and events handle they incremental slide down and eventually they will disappear from the rankings - if they don't come back.

There are so many examples of fighters having multiple exits from MMA into retirement.

Example Couture: announced his retirement in 2006 after losing a title fight to Liddel. He was removed from most of the rankings immediately or after a few months.
But nine months later, Couture called White and said he wanted to return to challenge Sylvia. And most of the people put him back in the rankings (in different spots from #3 to #10). He wins, he is on the top again.
Then couple of years after that he retires after dispute with UFC and start making movies.
Year after second retirement, he is fighting for title again.

Removal from rankings is also important for their opponents.
Couture after loosing to Chuck and retiring should still stay in top 10 LHW. That way everybody can see that Chuck beat 3 fighters that were currently ranked top 10 (Babalu,Tito,Couture).
Couture didn

 

Rankings are B.S.

 

Did you really just type all of that when rankings are purely subjective?

 

how about removing people from the rankings in a division if they move to another division? it makes no sense to have chael ranked at mw, or edgar ranked at lw.

 

You have computerized rankings that are not subjective. You apply same algorithm to everybody.

 

I would agree there. Also we shouldn't have somebody ranked in multiple divisions.
The only question is when do the switch from one division to another.
I would go by natural weight - Edgar was always a small LW and he fits into BW.
But, Sonnen was fighting constantly in MW and unless he has couple of fights in LHW, he should stay in MW rankings.

 

Computerized rankings ARE subjective. It takes human input and the programmers weigh certain aspects of MMA over others. Just because numbers and an algorithm is involved, doesn't make it not subjective. The only thing not subjective are FACTS

 

ok so mark coleman should still be #1 HW

 

Computer rankings are based on FACTS. There is no perfect system, but using computer to generate scores for fighters is much less subjective then any person picking fighters by their gut feeling.
There are lot of things that computer can do better than people, and one of them is processing a lot of inter-connected FACTS.

 

I said that in time they should incrementaly slide down.
Not suddenly just disappear.

 

Yes, a retired fighter could certainly be taken off the rankings immediately. For rankings designed to describe current state it's not interesting to see where a retired fighter stands.

Furthermore there are no 100% objective rankings. Even the ones that are built on mathematical systems have subjectivity injected to them when the rules for the systems were compiled. You can easily make two different mathematical systems to calculate rankings in vastly different ways.

On the other hand most rankings that are made by people aren't 100% subjective either, since the opinions that form the rankings are still rooted in what actually has happened.

 

Does it really matter?
Short answer...no it doesn't.

 

As you know yourself, announcing retirement for fighter doesn't mean much.

For example.
Couture is ranked #4 in January 2006.
Looses from Liddell and announces retirement in February 2006

 

i say pull em out since they arent a fighter anymore....most people arent retiring in the top 10 anyway, so its not too big of a deal either way

 

Of course, noting is 100%. There are things that are better and worse, but there is no absolute.
And I do agree that you can create two systems that will generate completely different results.
But we are talking about subjectivity in terms of judging and ranking people (fighters).
People will always be subjective toward those people that they like.

For example, if somebody likes Fedor, he will change his reasoning (or internal algorithm) for putting Fedor on top. One time it will be a win streak, another time competition that he faced, next is fighting style and being exciting.

What I wanted to say is that people are biased and they change scoring algorithm in their head easily.
But, once you give an algorithm to the machine, they will score it always in the same way.
That is objectivity that I am talking about.

 

There are rankings?

 

We are talking about fighter announcing retirement.
That is proven not to be reliable.

Couture, BJ Penn, Almeida,Cro Cop,Diaz - they all said multiple times that they are retiring.
Kurt Pellegrino not only retired once, but twice in 2011.

They have different reasons at the time of announcement and those reasons fade in time.
So I say, keep them on the ranking list for a year or two (just slide them down gradually) and if they come back, we know where they belong in the ranking order.
If they don

 

Why are people acting like subjectivity makes rankings worthless? Sure it will mean some people disagree with different spots but there is obviously some truth to credible rankings lists.

 

Some rankings do, nothing is official tough, I don't care.

 

I am not saying that human ranking is worthless, just saying it is very often very bias.

Right now we are comparing European MMA rankings from different European websites. They are ranking same people (MMA fighters from Europe), but as you are probably guessing, rankings are significantly different depending on the Country of origin.

Maybe it is not just because they like their own fighters better, but also they watch them and read more about them.

European rankings from England are including many Polish, Russian, Sweed, but only those that fight in their promotions are high in the rankings.

Same can be said about Pride versus UFC.
You watch more UFC, you think UFC fighters were better than Pride.