Fixed your post for you.
Franklin's career at MW is 8-3. Best wins at 185 are Tanner and Okami by a narrow decision. All losses were devastating.
Let's just remind that, by that time, UFC didnt match offers for their top contenders and former MW champions Bustamante or Lindland, or Suloev. Not to mention Filho, Saku, Hendo and others 185lbers were also getting better offers and opponents in Japan.
All the mentioned MWs from that era could very well beat Evan Tanner - much respect - for the belt, let alone Quarry and Loiseau. To put those Franklin's MW accomplshments in perspective.
How is Franklin with his 8-3 record at MW described above, can be even remotely ranked above legendary 185lbers - and Strikeforce champions - as Jacare Souza or Luke Rockhold?
The answer is strong UFC bias from back in the day.
Thoughtful post. I probably let Franklin's wins outside MW influence my thinking a bit much.
To put some more thoughts in the mix...
"All of his losses being devastating" sort of loses it's power when we are talking about three losses, two of which were to the divisional GOAT, with the final one being the last fight of his career when he was obviously past it.
I agree that the talent was majority-slanted outside the UFC during the Pride days, but I don't think that automatically implies anything for a specific fighter. There is nothing contradictory about fighting in a lesser organization but also being more talented than someone in a more talent-rich organization (especially with potential PED issues creating different fighting environments...at least potentially...those things need to be normalized if you want to do direct comparisons).
To that end, when you look at how Franklin performed against the guys of his era who "made their name" in Pride, I don't think it really suggests *him specifically* being in a lesser tier of fighter. Even though the fights happened mostly outside of MW, when he faced the Pride guys who were at relatively similarly place to him on the career arc...he generally made a good showing of himself.
Beyond that, Franklin and guys like Luke or Jacare are of somewhat different eras of MMA, which is why I said "relative to era". I think Rockhold and Jacare would be likely to beat Franklin H2H. I don't think the differences would be that radical when you take era differences into account though.
My true feeling is that a lot of the guys we are talking about are all clustered relatively close together in terms of career value. In those cases, I don't think splitting hairs is especially meaningful, even if fans do it when constructing lists or answering questions like the OP's question. If I wanted to really answer that question more carefully, I'd probably have to devote more time to it and look with a tighter microscope, so to speak.
Edit: I think I probably didn't give enough credit to the length of Rockhold and Jacare's tenure at MW as well...they certainly had more "filler" fights at MW than most....and those fights should carry a non-zero value.