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If the UFC had a chess-like rating...

Владислав IV

Владислав IV

White Belt
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The Elo rating system can be used as an objective approach to determining a ranking based on the skill level of UFC fighters, as opposed to the silly and arbitrary pound-for-pound rankings.
With a start rating at 100, this is how the current top 15 would look like:
  1. Jon Jones (363.863)
  2. Georges St-Pierre (346.526)
  3. Khabib Nurmagomedov (292.587)
  4. Dustin Poirier (287.057)
  5. Islam Makhachev (286.728)
  6. Kamaru Usman (285.422)
  7. Leon Edwards (280.988)
  8. Charles Oliveira (277.861)
  9. Alexander Volkanovski (274.928)
  10. Beneil Dariush (271.992)
  11. Aljamain Sterling (269.404)
  12. Demetrious Johnson (268.642)
  13. Amanda Nunes (266.690)
  14. Francis Ngannou (263.779)
  15. Robert Whittaker (263.539)
And out of the 2373 fighters that have fought in the UFC, these are the 5 highest recorded ratings:
  1. Jon Jones (363.863)
  2. Georges St-Pierre (346.526)
  3. Kamaru Usman (322.851)
  4. Anderson Silva (315.715)
  5. Tony Ferguson (297.683)
Fun fact:
The biggest mismatch (Elo discrepancy) in UFC history was Demetrious Johnson (260.357) vs Tim Elliott (71.886)

If anyone's interested in the full list check out this table https://nkshv.github.io/
 
thebesteva21 said:
Love Elo ratings, then again I also love chess. This thread pops up every few years, I believe there is a website dedicate to elo MMA rankings
Click to expand...

Do the goofy chess analogies from commentary piss you off? I'm a pretty avid chess player and they always grind my gills. lol
 
Great job TS, as a chess player myself I truly appropriated to see the unbiased numbers. Can you expend a little how data gathering/processing was done?
 
Владислав IV said:
The Elo rating system can be used as an objective approach to determining a ranking based on the skill level of UFC fighters, as opposed to the silly and arbitrary pound-for-pound rankings.
With a start rating at 100, this is how the current top 15 would look like:
  1. Jon Jones (363.863)
  2. Georges St-Pierre (346.526)
  3. Khabib Nurmagomedov (292.587)
  4. Dustin Poirier (287.057)
  5. Islam Makhachev (286.728)
  6. Kamaru Usman (285.422)
  7. Leon Edwards (280.988)
  8. Charles Oliveira (277.861)
  9. Alexander Volkanovski (274.928)
  10. Beneil Dariush (271.992)
  11. Aljamain Sterling (269.404)
  12. Demetrious Johnson (268.642)
  13. Amanda Nunes (266.690)
  14. Francis Ngannou (263.779)
  15. Robert Whittaker (263.539)
And out of the 2373 fighters that have fought in the UFC, these are the 5 highest recorded ratings:
  1. Jon Jones (363.863)
  2. Georges St-Pierre (346.526)
  3. Kamaru Usman (322.851)
  4. Anderson Silva (315.715)
  5. Tony Ferguson (297.683)
Fun fact:
The biggest mismatch (Elo discrepancy) in UFC history was Demetrious Johnson (260.357) vs Tim Elliott (71.886)

If anyone's interested in the full list check out this table https://nkshv.github.io/
Click to expand...
Jon Jones would be banned for having vibrating Anal beads up his ass.
_127279198_mediaitem127279197.jpg
 
There are lies, damn lies, and statistics.

Unfortunately, the amount of variables when looking at competition gives this sort of rating system a limited value.

Perhaps Sherdog's biggest fallacy is that of the static fighter. A fighter's abilities follow particular dynamics around current level of skill as well as mental and physical fitness (which are impacted by age and injury). The context of every win matters, not just the win/loss record of the opponent.

Of course, there are numerous other variables, such as champs who fought many smaller guys who came up in weight.
 
Last edited:
Reverse Baratoplata Sweep said:
Great job TS, as a chess player myself I truly appropriated to see the unbiased numbers. Can you expend a little how data gathering/processing was done?
Click to expand...
I extracted all the data from the ufcstats website. The algorithm only takes into account the caliber of opponent and the result of the fight, so I only had to do some web scraping to find "Fighter A", "Fighter B" and the "status" for each of the 7049 fights in UFC history. Once I gathered all the data, I processed in a relatively simple python code using the Elo formula. Obviously it is far from perfect. Winning a fight by DQ has the same weight as a dominating first round KO

Liverkick-king56 said:
Silly P4P system?
but your number system tries to tell me that Khabib, Aljo, Islam, Dariush and Poirier are higher than Mighty Mouse? The arguably most skilled fighter of all time?
Click to expand...
Obviously it is far from perfect. Winning a fight by DQ has the same weight as a dominating first round KO so it lacks accuracy. Another problem is that some fighters benefit by winning against aging fighters, whose Elo doesn't reflect their current skills. Donald Cerrone as the 6th best fighter of all time is a glaring error and a much better example as to why numbers don't tell the whole story.
 
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