By Tim Lee (timlee@mmaratings.net)
My personal problems with WAMMA is that some of people in the committee work for promotions, train fighters, or sponsor fighters. Ranking Committees should only involve people from an independent MMA media website. They don’t sponsor fighters. They don’t train fighters. They don’t work for a promotion. They are not broadcasters.
Bill Goldberg does not belong on as a officer of WAMMA when he publicly said “I don’t respect traditional martial arts.”
George Garcia from Tagg Radio shouldn’t be on that committee, because Tagg Radio sponsors fighters.
Pat Miletich trains fighters. If you train fighters, you can be biased on rankings.
Mauro Renallo, he works for promotions.
I don’t believe in ranking fighters 1 through 10. I believe in ranking them as “World Class”, “Open Class” or “Scholastic Class” fighters.
Dr. Can you elaborate on why you don’t believe in ranking fighters 1 through 10?
Wouldn’t even MMA media outlets theoretically not the bastions of unbiased, objective opinion, considering they would be granted interviews and facetime with some fighters, but not with others?
Sure Eric,
You know sometimes "Fighter A" beats "Fighter B", "Fighter B" beats "Fighter C" and "Fighter C" beats "Fighter A". This is why it's very hard to rank #1 through #10.
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Humungus,
Interviewing a fighter on sherdog or mmaweekly is one thing. I know what you are talking about. Forrest Griffin will talk to MMAWeekly, but not Sherdog (anymore). Every trainer & coach says: "we have the best fighters."
But there are ways to rectify that. One is with the timeliness. Whoever had the more recent win takes the lead in the rankings. Other ways t solve that could be with dominance of the wins, or with the accumulated records.
Personally my favorite method is user driven rankings. When you have popular consensus, you have far more legitimacy. As long as everyone know what the criteria is. Look how many people voted for Anderson Silva as 2008 fighter of the year.
I find myself disinterested in rankingsthat are generated by a limited group of “experts.” But what do you have to say about user driven rankings?
Another consideration is that rankings are for the fans more than anything, and I doubt that fans would be as happy limited to categories such as world class.
World Class = Varsity Level Fighter
Open Class = JV Level Fighter
Scholastic Class = Frosh/Soph Level Fighter
In the future, I might even break it down to Scholastic “A” = Soph Level Fighter and Scholastic “B” = Frosh Level Fighter.
Right now Gomi is no longer an World Class level fighter to me. I have seen athletics bump down from Varsity to JV level, and also vice versa. I’m not saying that an Open Class fighter can’t beat an World Class fighter either.
I try to rank in there last 5 fights, in the last 3 years. If that fighter had less than 5 fights in the last 3 years. I only rank on the 4, 3, 2, or 1 fight that fighter had in the last 3 years.
I’ve always felt that WAMMA formed itself just so they could fake it ’til they make it. Hold press conferences and tell everyone that they’re “the” go to organization, and once they start to make it, get $$ from sponsors so they can pay themselves huge salaries. I mean really, what is their purpose, except to be a lengend in their own minds?
Dang – wish I’d thought of it first…
WAMMA is a joke. I agree with Tim that those guys shouldn’t be on the rankings committee. However, I do prefer ranking 1-10 opposed to ranking guys World Class, Open Class, and Scholastic Class. Especially when dealing with the casual fan. The UFC LHW division is a prime example. Rashad, Rampage, Forrest Griffin, and Lyoto Machida are all ‘world class’. However, how would you decide who deserved the next title shot?