Rousey #1 in SI P4P ranking
Jeff Waggendheim: “Ronda Rousey is not merely the most dominant fighter in MMA, she’s the most dominant athlete in all of sports.”
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With Jon Jones suspended and his title stripped, the former UFC light heavyweight chamoion has been removed from the UFC’s rankings, and from Sports Illustrated‘s rankings of all fighters, which of course includes those not in the UFC.
As Jeff Waggenheim explains, with Jones out, Rousey moves up to #1 in the pound for pound list. He notes that it does not mean #1 Rousey can beat #2 Aldo, just as it does not mean that #4 Demetrious Johnson can beat #5 Cain Velasquez.
Pound-for-pound rankings, at least as interpreted here, involve the weighing of parallel track records. And by that measurement, no one but Jones is close to Rousey. She is 11-0 with five defenses of her UFC women’s bantamweight championship. She’s won all but one of her fights in the first round, seven in the first minute—including her two most recent, a 16-second knockout of Alexis Davis last July, and February’s 14-second submission of Cat Zingano. Rousey is not merely the most dominant fighter in MMA, she’s the most dominant athlete in all of sports.
SI Pound for pound
1. Ronda Rousey
2. José Aldo
3. Chris Weidman
4. Demetrious Johnson
5. Cain Velasquez
6. T.J. Dillashaw
7. Robbie Lawler
8. Frankie Edgar
9. Khabib Nurmagomedov
10. Joanna Jedrzejczyk
So Rousey is risen, and another woman, UFC strawweight champ Joanna Jedrzejczyk moved up to #10. The UFC’s official media panel generated rankings are not radically different, with the exception of Rousey at #1, and the absence of Jedrzejczyk.
1. Jose Aldo
2. Demetrious Johnson
3. Chris Weidman
4. Cain Velasquez
5. Ronda Rousey
6. TJ Dillashaw
7. Rafael dos Anjos
8. Robbie Lawler
9. Anderson Silva
10. Anthony Pettis
11. Renan Barao
12. Johny Hendricks
13. Fabricio Werdum
14. Vitor Belfort
15. Dominick Cruz
