Best Non-UFC Fighters

Here are the best non-UFC fighters.  This shows where the UFC is stacked and where they lack.  There competition is mainly in Affliction at heavyweight and DREAM at lightweight.  Here are the best non-UFC guys that the UFC should look to sign if possible. 

Rank	Heavyweight	Light Heavy	Middleweight	Welterweight	Lightweight
1	Fedor Emelianenko	Antonio Rogerio Nogueira	Paulo Filho	Jake Shields	Takanori Gomi
2	Andrei Arlovski	Ricardo Arona	Matt Lindland	Carlos Condit	Shinya Aoki
3	Josh Barnett	Rafael Feijao	Robbie Lawler	Jay Hieron	JZ Calvancante
4	Tim Sylvia	Vladimir Matyushenko	Kazuo Misaki	Nick Thompson	Eddie Alvarez
5	Ben Rothwell	Babalu Sobral	Gegard Mousasi	Mach Sakurai	Mitsuhiro Ishida
6	Mirko Cro Cop	Tito Ortiz	Vitor Belfort	Mike Pyle	Joachim Hansen
7	Roy Nelson	Steve Cantwell	“Jacare” de Sousa		Tatsuya Kawajiri
8	Aleks Emelianenko	Brian Stann	Jason Miller		Josh Thomson
9	Antonio Silva		Melvin Manhoef		Gilbert Melendez
10	Alistair Overeem		Murilio Rua		Vitor Ribeiro
11			Cung Le		Jamie Varner
12			Denis Kang		Ryan Schultz
13			Joey Villasenor		KJ Noons
14			Frank Shamrock		Nick Diaz
15			Yoshihiro Akiyama		Caol Uno
16			Jorge Santiago
17			Chael Sonnen

DREAM 4 Results and Thoughts

Quick Results from DREAM 4:

Shinya Aoki defeats Katsuhiko Nagata by Submission (Gogoplata) in Round 1:  5:12
Alistair Overeem defeats Tae Hyun Lee by  KO (Punches)  at :36 of round 1
Ralek Gracie defeats Alavutdin Gadzhiyev by armbar submission at 3:02 of round 1
Hideo Tokoro defeats Darren Uyenoyama by unanimous decision
Gegard Mousasi defeats Dong Sik Yoon by Unanimous Decision
Zelg Galesic defeats Taiei Kin by TKO (Elbow Injury) at 1:05 of round 1                                                Ronaldo “Jacare” de Souza defeats Jason “Mayhem” Miller by unanimous decision
Melvin Manhoef defeats Kazushi Sakuraba by TKO (Punches) in round 1

Most Impressive Performance: Melvin Manhoef

Knock Out Of The Night: Alistair Overeem

Submission Of The Night: Shinya Aoki

• Jacare proved he can fight with the best at 185 lbs.
• Shinya Aoki had an excellent submission on Nagata (a gogoplata)
• Alistair Overeem had a vicious KO
• Melvin Manhoef rolled through Japanese legend Sakuraba

Also: The Semi-Finals were announced for the lightweight Grand Prix, which is to be held in July at DREAM 5.  They are Tatsuya Kawajiri vs. Eddie Alvarez and Caol Uno vs. Shinya Aoki. 

If I Could…

Okay, let me play dreamer for a minute.  If I was employed by the UFC and I could sign 3 guys from each weight class, who would I sign…?

Heavyweight:

• Fedor Emelianenko
• Josh Barnett
• Randy Couture

Also Considered: Roy Nelson, Brett Rogers, and Ben Rothwell

Light Heavyweight:

• Antonio Rogerio Nogueira
• Ricardo Arona
• Valdimir Matyushenko

(Also Considered: Babalu and Brian Stann)

Middleweight:

• Ronaldo “Jacare” de Souza
• Paulo Filho
• Robbie Lawler

Also Considered: Lindland and Jason “Mayhem” Miller

Welterweights:

• Jay Hieron
• Jake Shields
• Carlos Condit

Also Considered: Hayato Sakurai and Nick Thompson

Lightweights

• Takanori Gomi
• Gilbert Melendez
• Gesias Calvancante

Also Considered: Eddie Alvarez and Shinya Aoki and Urijah Faber if he would move up

UFC’s Best Divison

I went to HDnet’s fighter rankings and based this on which UFC weight divisons had the most top 20 fighters.  I know there are other ways to judge the best, but this is interesting…

1. Light Heavyweights –  They are stacked in the UFC.  This is where the light heavyweight competition lies.  They have the top 11 (Jackson, Henderson, Griffin, Liddell, Jardine, Machida, Wanderlei, Evans, Thiago Silva, and Sokodjou) guys in the world and 20 of the top 25 guys.  This is a great divison, full of star power.

2. Welterweights – They have 10 of the top 20 (St. Pierre, Fitch, Hughes, Serra, Koscheck, Sanchez, Alves, Parisyan, Davis and Gono), but 8 of the world’s top ten.  They have a near top ten monopoly only missing out on Shields and Condit.  I feel that there are other UFC guys to mention in top 20 talk (Chris Wilson and Chris Lytle), but the divison is strong and has the top tier welterweights in the world.

3. Lightweights – In most rankings the UFC gets cheated in the lightweight divison.  The system I used ranked 8 of their guys as top 20 in the world (Penn, Sherk, Huerta, Stevenson, Florian, Guida, Tyson Griffin, and Gray Maynard).  I know some of those other guys are good, but they are overrated.  Gomi can’t beat UFC guys.  Nick Diaz, B.J. Penn and Marcus Aurelo all beat him.  Aoki, Melendez, Calvancanti and bunch are unproven in my opinion against top guys.  Plus I feel some guys unfairly got left out of rankings.  Where is Marcu Aurelio?  FranK Edgar?  or Joe Lauzon?  or even Nate Diaz?  You mean to tell me Edgar is not a top 20?  This divison is stacked and has more contenders than any UFC divison.  DREAM does have some great lightweights.  I’d love to see a fight card of UFC’s top lightweights against DREAM’s top lightweights.  I think UFC would win easily.

4. Middleweights – They have 7 of the top 20 fighters in the world at this divison (Anderson Silva, Rich Franklin, Dan Hemderson, Marquardt, Okami, Bisping and Leites.  I put this above heavyweights first of all because I believe there are some guys that could be in the top 20 mix (Quarry, MacDonald, Leben, Cote, Kampmann and Almeida). It still is weak, not because it isn’t deep, but because they can’t find anyone to compete with Anderson Silva.  Anderson Silva is the second reason I put this divison above Heavyweights…enough said.

5. Heavyweights –  They also have 7 of the top 20 fighters in the world at Heavyweight  (Nogueira, Werdum, Gonzaga, Kongo, Vera, Mir and Herring).  Only 3 of those guys are top ten in the world.  All this assumed Arlovski signs with Affiction.  If that happens Affliction will have 6 of the top ten (Fedor, Sylvia, Barnett, Rothwell, Arlovski and Aleksander Emelianenko) plus Pedro Rizzo.  This is a weak divison for the UFC, but they do have some good prospects in Carwin, Lesnar and Velasquez.  This divison was once strong, but since has lost Couture, Cro Cop, Sylvia, Arlovski, and O’Brien.

Fighting Organizations Rankings

I have ranked the organizations before, but here is the updated rankings of who has the best product.

1. UFC – Still the best of the best.  Has more ranked fighters by far.  Has the most recognizable names in the likes of Chuck Liddell, Forrest Griffin, Shogun, Wanderlei Silva, Rampage Jackson, Anderson Silva, Rich Franklin, Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, Georges St. Pierre, Matt Hughes and B.J. Penn.

2. Affliction – By far the best competitive heavyweight divison with Fedor, Tim Sylvia, Aleksander Emelianenko, Josh Barnett, Ben Rothwell, Pedro Rizzo and maybe Arlovski.  Not to mention Lindland, Whitehead and Babalu. 

3. WEC –  The WEC has some star power, but is in the UFC’s shadow majorly.  The growing featherweight divison will help them as will the bantamweight with star Miguel Torres.  Guys like Condit, Stann, Filho and Faber give WEC the name recognition.  WEC still seems to be the minor league UFC.  Their success will not come with the bigger fighters, but with lightweights, featherweights and bantamweights. 

4. EliteXC –  Their CBS deal will help them.  Kimbo can be a star.  They do great partnering with other promotions like Strikeforce and allowing guys to fight in DREAM. 

5. DREAM – DREAM 1-3 have been solid with solid fighters especially lightweights and middleweights. Has guys like Aoki and Ishida as well as Caol Uno and Kwajiri. Has other guys fight for them like Alvarez, Gilbert Melendez, JZ Calvancante, Diaz, Cro Cop, Jason Mayhem Miller, Manhoef, Denis Kang, Mark Hunt, Jacare, Kid Yamamoto, Sakurai and Hansen. 

6. Strikeforce – They have a few good fighters which helps them greatly.  They have Thomson, Le and Melendez

7. World Victory Road –  They don’t have an American appeal, but they do have Gomi and some other solid Japanese fighters.  Also they have Kazuo Misaki, Kevin Randlemen, Jeff Monson, and Nick Thompson

UFC’s Competition

I have been critical of Dana White’ abilitiy to sign the free agents in the MMA world.  I think the bottom line is that Dana is unwilling to bend.  I just heard that Jacare, an excellent jiu-jitsu guy signed with DREAM.  The negotions broke down with the UFC because Dana felt they wanted too much money.  Maybe he is right, but nevertheless Jacare is now in a competitong organization.  Furthermore, it seems the UFC fails to sign top notch fighters especailly Japanese guys like Ishida, Ayoki or Sakurai.  There are other top level fighters that the UFC couldn’t sign.  Worse than that there are several top tier guys I don’t know if the UFC even cares about (Jakes Shields, JZ Calvancante, Gilbert Melendez).  He won’t sign Fedor.  He won’t sign Lindand.  In my opinion UFC will never be a monopoly and has some serious competition. With some of the internal problems and some of the UFC stars upset we could see another organization become the “big dog” in MMA.  In my opinion here is UFC’s biggest competitors.

1. EliteXC.  Dana’s feud with Shaw hasn’t helped.  Shaw is a much more typical commissioner than White.  The CBS deal will bring them in a lot of viewers, but will also help all MMA.  They have some stars in EliteXC (Nick Diaz, Jake Shields, Cung Le, Robbie Lawler). They are willing to take chances as seen by the future star Kimbo Slice.  They offered Fedor, and may get him.

2. WEC – I know it is Zuffa owned, but they have some great fighters that the UFC should bring over to the UFC.  I don’t know why you have another organization with top level fighters.  They have some great guys that would translate well anywhere (Paulo Filho, Carlos Condit, Urijah Faber, Miguel Torres, Doug Marshall, Brian Stann, Rob McCullough, Jamie Varner, Chael Sonnen, Leonard Garcia and Jens Pulver)

3. DREAM – Not much competition now, but has some good fighters (Sakurai, Cro Cop, Calvancanti, Ishida, Aoki, Denis Kang, Yamamoto, Joachim Hansen, Eddie Alvarez and Mark Hunt).  The American market is next to nothing though.

4. World Victory Road — Josh Barnett and Takanori Gomi enough said.  A few more big names and they have something good.

5. Strikeforce.  Not great competition, but still have a few guys any monopoly would want (Frank Shamrock, Josh Thompson and Gilbert Melendez)

6. ICON.  They have Jason “Mayhem” Miller and a future star in Kala Hose.

 Right now the UFC is doing fine.  They have a few competitors, but they are still the big leagues.  They have the best fighters.  Some divisions they are better than others.  For example at Light Heavyweight they have a near monopoly and at welterweight they are doing pretty well.  There are several key free agents out there (Fedor, Arlovski, Couture).  If EliteXC or someone else picks up the other guys they can really compete.