« Is Yoshihiro Akiyama vs. Chris Leben a 50/50 fight? | Home | Five things I’m focusing on for the Brock Lesnar/Shane Carwin UFC 116 fight »
It’s amusing watching the critics of rankings get more worked up than those who actually like rankings
By Zach Arnold | July 1, 2010
“The championship is a way to increase business. The championship should not be there to be used to supercede and do worse business. I mean, then what’s the point? You shouldn’t even have a championship if you’re going to be a slave to your championship when it gets in the way of business. That’s retarded.” — Dave Meltzer
Whenever I listen to him talk about online MMA rankings lists, for some reason he manages to mesh about three different issues into one specific topic. The question was brought up to him as to why anyone takes rankings seriously at all and his immediate response is to somehow mix the Fedor/Werdum rematch into the conversation and psychoanalyze why people don’t think the rematch should happen. Then on top of that, he starts to talk about how people care more about championship fights and other factors rather than rankings.
Which, in a funny way, is the point of the person bringing up the question as to why rankings even matter.
UFC titles mean something to the public. Strikeforce titles mean nothing to the public. The way the two promotions treat their champions and book them is so diametrically opposite to each other, it’s not funny. One promotion ignore rankings and won’t publish a rankings list. The other promotion actually considers what online rankings are and has booked ‘super fights’ in the past based off of this.
That’s your set-up for this passage about why the Internet MMA message boards continue to explode with threads about rankings and how the critics are going crazy reading such threads.
DAVE MELTZER: “Jon Fitch has a better record than Josh Koscheck and Jon Fitch lost the one match to St. Pierre, then he’s won every match since, OK? Based on that, he’s more deserving of a match with St. Pierre than Koscheck. Koscheck lost to Paulo Thiago. Koscheck lost to Thiago Alves. OK? However, OK, what match do people want to see?”
BRYAN ALVAREZ: “Yeah, but, regardless, hold on a second. Why would anyone even care about these mythical worldwide rankings when whether Fedor is #1 or #10, it doesn’t mean A THING. It doesn’t matter what he’s ranked, he’s not getting a shot at the UFC Heavyweight title. If UFC actually had a rankings system and based on where you were in that system…”
DAVE MELTZER: “UFC can’t have a rankings system because if they did and followed it, it would get in the way of business.”
BRYAN ALVAREZ: “All I’m saying is, if they had one, if they had one that actually led to fights, then sure, this is something that is open to debate. But when you’re ranking a Strikeforce guy versus a UFC guy and you’re getting very, very upset over where they should or should not be ranked, why would you waste your time?”
DAVE MELTZER: “OK, well… to me, if it’s just fans, that’s cool. But if it’s writers that know the sport that are you know arguing about you know I mean we had that whole thing with Shin’ya Aoki you know and BJ Penn on who deserved to be #1.”
BRYAN ALVAREZ: “YEAH, WHO CARES!”
DAVE MELTZER: “And it was like the whole thing was ludicrous because you know #1, BJ Penn is so much far above Shin’ya Aoki as a fighter.”
BRYAN ALVAREZ: “BUT IT DOESN’T EVEN MATTER. None of that matters.”
DAVE MELTZER: “But the point is that they’re not going to fight each other anyways.”
BRYAN ALVAREZ: “Exactly! It doesn’t matter if Aoki, if BJ’s #1, it doesn’t matter if he’s #2, it doesn’t matter if he’s #10. He’s never facing anybody except who UFC wants him to face next. If every writer in the world had a universal Top 10, it doesn’t matter.”
DAVE MELTZER: “Oh, no. But you know but every magazine does it, every web site does it except ours.”
BRYAN ALVAREZ: “What a waste of time.”
DAVE MELTZER: “Yeah, well, again, I don’t mind fans debating it. It’s just that you can’t debate it and pretend it means something because it means nothing and…”
BRYAN ALVAREZ: “But it does mean something to these people. I mean, it really bothers them.”
DAVE MELTZER: “You know, it bothers people that you know a guy with a 4-1 record, you know, if he wins he’s going to be 5-1, you know. I mean, if Brock Lesnar wins, he’s going to be you know he’s going to be as close I mean there’s no such thing as undisputed because there’s too many differences of opinion, but he will be the consensus #1 guy in the world if he wins this fight.”
BRYAN ALVAREZ: “Which means what?”
DAVE MELTZER: “Well, it doesn’t really necessarily mean anything…”
Topics: Media, MMA, UFC, Zach Arnold | 13 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
Chico seems upset. This automatically makes me want to do a billion rankings and keep bugging him about how important they are.
Another Meltzer comment…. And another slide down the bad size he falls.
Meltzer’s first quote in this article is horrible. And it’s way too much of his Pro Wrestling background that is starting to shine too bright.
An organization must be a slave to the world title belt. The same way MLB should be a slave to the world series. The same way the NFL should be a slave to the Super Bowl.
A championship is a way to increase business for PW. For a real sport like MMA, it is a way to show who the best in each division is and to have all other fighters ultimately be fighting for that goal. Without credible champions you have nothing.
And like I have said before, they should have UFC only rankings on websites and magazines. It is based on fights people will know can happen. Comparing UFC fighters to non-UFC fighters is like trying to mix MLB and Japanese league baseball stats. It just doesn’t work.
I agree with most all of 45 Huddle’s posts–but not the “UFC” only rankings.
Other than that–it is pretty much spot on.
Rankings “do matter” and they only don’t matter if you are legitimizing “champions” solely by virtue of promoter.
Is anybody familiar with the actcual act of getting tickets?
UFC is allegedly in Oakland this weekend (thats got to be a car stereo candy store for 6-9 village!), But heck if I can figure out how to get tickets if I choose to splurge!
I’m not a big sports events fan.
The last big ticket I bought was public enemy in San Jose.
I looked on google but as google tends to be I got mostly results from Couture vs. Lesnar.
UFC Oakland is in August, tickets can be found at UFC.com, of all places.
Totally sick of reading Meltzer’s opinions on this site. A little more variety in the punditry would be nice. I can only handle so many forced, not-at-all-accurate comparisons between MMA and pro wrestling
I don’t necessarily agree with your take on Meltzer, but like you I also don’t get the fixation with him.
Sick of Meltzer? Are you kidding me? Where else are we going to get insight such as:
“you know what I’m saying? I mean, you know,”?
What about this gem:
“you know arguing about you know I mean”?
And who could forget:
“You know, it bothers people that you know a guy with a 4-1 record, you know, if he wins he’s going to be 5-1, you know. I mean”?
That kind of analysis doesn’t grow on trees.
I’d probably enjoy it if there was a variety beyond Meltzer and Sherdog transcripts, yeah.
For those who think I focus only on a couple of people on transcripts, you don’t realize how heavy my workload is and how much audio I try to get around to each week.
“YOU’RE RUNNING YOUR WEBSITE WRONG”
I enjoy doing rankings and having the occasional online discussion about them. They’re like a fun ongoing puzzle to me. Plus they get me to learn more about various fighters’ careers, get me interested in fights I might not otherwise care much about (e.g. Alessio Sakara’s fights after he beat Thales Leites), and offer some perspective into how fighters are their rankings are used by promoters and perceived by fans vs. how they really shake down (in my opinion).
So I agree that it’s weird how much ardor they attract from detractors. Sometimes it seems like nobody cares about rankings more than people who think rankings don’t matter.
lol