When Francis Ngannou beat Stipe Miocic the other night, he took over the #1 spot on our Heavyweight rankings but only jumped to #3 on our pound-for-pound rankings. There, Miocic fell to #5 while jumping from #2 to #1 was...Khabib Nurmagomedov.
| Mar 2021 |
Apr 2021 |
Fighter | WC | Rating | Rated Record | Org | March 2021 results |
| 2 | 1 | Khabib Nurmagomedov | LW | 91.59 | 15-0-0 | UFC |  |
| 3 | 2 | Kamaru Usman | WW | 89.02 | 13-0-0 | UFC | |
| 10 | 3 | Francis Ngannou | HW | 85.73 | 10-2-0 | UFC | Beat #1 Stipe Miocic |
| 4 | 4 | Jon Jones | LH | 80.75 | 20-1-0 | UFC | --last rated win -13 months. |
| 1 | 5 | Stipe Miocic | HW | 69.01 | 15-4-0 | UFC | Lost to #10 Francis Ngannou |
Khabib (as we will reference him from here forth) is still our Lightweight champ despite retiring about 5 months ago following his win over Justin Gaethje. But we don't de-list fighters for retiring. Too many fighters "unretire" or make comebacks, so it's best to just let time degrade their ranking and after 5 years, go to zero.
Besides, we don't feel like keeping a history of every fighter's retirement pronouncements. Currently there are two retired fighters that hold SportsRatings MMA belts, Khabib at Lightweight and Henry Cejudo at Bantamweight. When a fighter hasn't fought in a full year he becomes "inactive" and doesn't hold the belt anymore, regardless of whether he's still at #1 in his division. Jon Jones is inactive at Light Heavyweight (where #2 Jan Blachowicz is interim champ) and Demetrious Johnson is inactive at Flyweight (Deiveson Figueiredo is interim Flyweight champ).
Khabib won't relinquish the Lightweight belt until October 25 of this year, while Cejudo will be Bantamweight champ until May 10th.
What this means is that Khabib can still be our P4P champion until November 1st. Someone could pass him, since he won't be earning any more points. #2 Kamaru Usman will probably get really close if he beats Jorge Masvidal on April 24th, but it won't quite be enough.
There haven't been many "chart-toppers" in the history of our P4P list. Going all the way back to the first UFC, there have only been 18 different people who have been #1 outright (while active):
Start Fighter Rating Reign 11/1993 Royce Gracie 20.46 13 months 12/1994 Ken Shamrock 36.21 17 months 05/1996 Dan Severn 40.73 9 months 02/1997 Mark Coleman 38.71 5 months 07/1997 Maurice Smith 31.86 1 month 08/1997 Igor Vovchanchyn 32.56 1 month 09/1997 Johil de Oliveira 32.77 2 months 11/1997 Igor Vovchanchyn 37.41 1 month 12/1997 Masakatsu Funaki 38.03 2 months 02/1998 Igor Vovchanchyn 39.21 24 months (26 months total) 02/2000 Dan Henderson 58.01 10 months 12/2000 Wanderlei Silva 49.29 2 months 02/2001 Antonio Rod. Nogueira 55.53 25 months 03/2003 Fedor Emelianenko 68.30 41 months 10/2006 Fedor Emelianenko 102.20 21 months 07/2008 Fedor Emelianenko 106.14 23 months (85 months total) 06/2010 Georges St. Pierre 87.18 28 months 10/2012 Anderson Silva 92.78 1 month 11/2012 Georges St. Pierre 97.77 24 months (52 months total) 01/2015 Jon Jones 104.70 12 months 04/2016 Jon Jones 100.76 12 months (24 months total) 06/2018 Stipe Miocic 84.40 1 month 07/2018 Daniel Cormier 92.00 13 months 08/2019 Stipe Miocic 87.65 19 months (20 months total) 03/2021 Khabib Nurmagomedov 91.59 1 month
In addition, 7 fighters held the "active p4p" title while the #1 fighter was inactive:
- Chuck Liddell (08/2006 for 2 months)
- Quinton Jackson (04/2008 for 3 months)
- Anderson Silva (04/2012 for 6 months)
- Jon Jones (11/2014 for 2 months)
- Fabricio Werdum (01/2016 for 3 months)
- Conor McGregor (04/2017 for 1 month)
- Stipe Miocic (05/2017 for 13 months)
Khabib will likely be #1 from end of March through end of September, corresponding to monthly ratings for April to October, not a bad 7-month reign for a retired fighter. Usman is poised to take over after that, unless Ngannou and Jones fight this summer, which is not looking likely.
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