Making Sense of the World Lightweight Rankings

In Tuesday’s Dream 11 event in Yokohama, Japan, Shinya Aoki defeated Joachim Hansen to win Dream’s lightweight title belt and retain his WAMMA championship. The UFC and its parent company, Zuffa dominate the top ten rankings in most of the weight classes in Mixed Martial Arts. The lightweight division, along with the heavyweight division are the two weight classes in which Zuffa dominance has been disputed.

Today, I tried to make some sense of the world lightweight rankings.

In most cases, ranking most of the fighters is a fairly straightforward affair. For example, in the welterweight division, most of the top ten fighters have many elite opponents in common with the other fighters in the top ten, as well as a lot of head-to-head match ups.

The situation in the lightweight division isn’t nearly so clear. In the most recent FightMania.com rankings, there are four UFC fighters (BJ Penn, Kenny Florian, Frank Edgar, and Diego Sanchez), and six non-UFC fighters (Shinya Aoki, Eddie Alvarez, Tatsuya Kawajiri, Joachim Hansen, Gesias Cavalcante, and Josh Thomson).

But while BJ Penn and Shinya Aoki are considered the top fighters in their separate promotions, the exact placements of the other fighters in the top ten is almost arbitrary in most rankings.

Trying to compare the records of the UFC fighters to the records of the non-UFC fighters is a nearly-impossible task.

For starters, consider that none of the four UFC fighters in the top 10 have ever faced any of the six non-UFC top ten. So barring even the smallest of head-to-head records, the next step is to look at records against common opponents.

Comparing the records against common opponents also does not yield decisive results. Contrary to the usual pattern in MMA where there is usually a great number of common opponents between fighters at the highest level, there are surprisingly few common opponents between the four UFC fighters and the six non-UFC fighters. One would think a fighter like Joe Stevenson, with forty fights under his belt would have fought most of the top fighters in the world. But while Stevenson has fought three of the four aforementioned UFC fighters, he has fought none of the six other fighters.

Among the few common opponents bridging the gap between the UFC four and non-UFC six are Yves Edwards, Caol Uno, Takanori Gomi, Clay Guida, and a precious few others.

Comparing the records against common opponents is further complicated by the fact that for the comparisons to have any meaning, the common opponents need to have mixed results, as most of the common opponents have lost to both the top UFC and top non-UFC fighters.

Comparing the top 10 UFC fighters to the top 10 non-UFC fighters does make a somewhat clearer picture, but only marginally so, due to the same problems already mentioned.

All of this has led me to the conclusion that at the present time it is simply impossible to definitively say whether the UFC truly does have the majority of the best lightweight fighters. Hopefully some of these fighters from other organizations will join the UFC so that we can have a better perspective on how the divisional top ten rankings should actually play out.

Fortunately, there is at least some small consolation.

Watching the fight at Dream 11 between Aoki and Hansen did still give me some small indication of who in fact is the best lightweight fighter in the world.

The best fighter essentially must come down to the better fighter between BJ Penn and Shinya Aoki. The best non-UFC lightweight is Shinya Aoki. He cemented that status with his recent wins over Eddie Alvarez and Joachim Hansen. Yet despite his victory yesterday over Hansen, he did not look overwhelming.

Aoki struggled to compete with Hansen in any of the striking exchanges, and was forced to take the the fight to the mat often. Despite frequent takedowns, Hansen was able to neutralize Aoki’s ground offense for most of the fight, to the point that he was probably leading the fight on the scorecards up until the last two minutes of the fight.

That Hansen was able to fend off Aoki’s submission skills for so long speaks volumes of how Aoki would likely fare against BJ Penn.

BJ Penn is far superior to Aoki in terms of striking skills. In fact, I’m not even convinced that BJ would be out-struck by the strikers outside of the UFC like Eddie Alvarez. In order for Aoki to win against Penn, he would need to beat Penn with his grappling skills.

Aoki may have been able to beat Hansen eventually, but BJ Penn is a much better grappler than Hansen, and may be a better grappler than Aoki. Hansen was taken down by Aoki at will. Aoki would likely struggle to take Penn down to the ground.

The fighters who have been able to cause Penn trouble have all been great wrestlers. Submission fighters like Aoki, who lack in wrestling skills have not troubled Penn.

In the higher weight classes Penn has been out-muscled, but has not been out-grappled in the lightweight division. The task is even harder for an opponent like Aoki who doesn’t complement his grappling with effective ground-and-pound.

Overall, I see Penn as being an utterly terrible matchup for Shinya Aoki.

So while the debate may rage on concerning the division as a whole, one thing should be certain: BJ Penn is the undisputed best lightweight fighter in the world.

By Darren Wong for FightMania.com

Tags: Clay Guida, Diego Sanchez, DREAM, Eddie Alvarez, Joachim Hansen, Joe Stevenson, Kenny Florian, Shinya Aoki, Tatsuya Kawajiri, UFC, WAMMA