Fedor’s Folly?
Posted by Kendall Shields on 10th January 2008
When it comes to the fight game, everyone’s an Aristotle. Fight fans love rankings. They downright need rankings. Who reading this site doesn’t have, in their own mind, the perfectly just and true list of the top welterweights in the world, neatly and indisputably ordered one through ten? Heavyweights, middleweights, lightweights — we’ve got it all figured out, and with the newly prominent WEC, featherweight and bantamweight rankings will no longer be the preserve of only the Shooto and DEEP enthusiasts among us. Of course, my top-ten lists bear only passing resemblance to yours (what do you mean Carlos Newton isn’t a top-ten whatever-he’s-fighting-at-now-weight?), and conversations turn into friendly arguments, and then maybe not-so-friendly arguments, until one or both of us walk away convinced that the other has no idea what they’re talking about. That’s what rankings do, and that’s why we love them.
In the last week, two major MMA media outlets, Sherdog and Yahoo!, have released their first pound-for-pound rankings of 2008, and, naturally, I’ve got problems with them. And you’ve got problems with them. It’s inconceivable that any two fight fans would see eye to eye on matters of this magnitude: non-binding, utterly inconsequential lists of who would be the best fighter if everybody was the same size are serious business. But what interests me most about these rankings isn’t whether or not Yahoo! is right to have BJ Penn at number seven (they’re not) or if Sherdog’s inclusion of Shinya Aoki in their top ten is, at this point, premature (it might be). What’s most striking is what’s happening with Fedor.
Posted in Fedor Emelianenko, Kendall Shields, Rankings | 1 Comment »