MMA on Tap Top 10 - November 11, 2008

what are you guys smoking with your rankings - I’m sure people have lots of gripes with them. 

Aleks at #10?? I love aleks, but the only win that could possibly put him there is Kharitonov over 2 years ago!

Who would you put in the #10 spot? The reason why Aleks is still there in our minds, is because no one has done anything to unseat him. Kharitonov disappeared for a year. Overeem is no longer struggling, but has he done enough since then to garner real consideration? Rothwell was on a good run too but Arlovski but an end to that pretty quick. Other than that, there’s no one really deserving.

You could put any one of those people you mentioned up there.  I’m not certain what criteria you use to develop the rankings, but the problem with Aleks is that the only argument you can make for him is that win over Kharitonov in 2006.  There really is nothing else out there to justify a top 10 spot for Aleks. 

For Overeem, Rothwell, heck, even Kharitonov, there are many more arguments for inclusion in the top 10. 

For Overeem, it’s his wins over Hunt, Kharitonov (2006), Buentello (who’s only lost to Overeem and Arlovski in the last 4 years).  You could even consider his strong showing against Filipovic for merit.

For Rothwell, he is 13-1 in his last 14 fights, losing only to the #4 HW Arlovski. 

For Kharitonov, it’s his wins over Overeem and Werdum.

Depending on how you view matches against non-top 10 fighters, you could say that fighters like Kongo/Herring/Mir etc.. deserve inclusion as well.

I think he has you there John.

mma is the hardest to rank so i don’t think either is wrong.. they both have points and i could see either being right. 

i give u guys props for trying

I agree with you toodiesel, any of those three guys - Kharitonov, Rothwell, and Overeem - could easily be put in the #10 spot. I have no problem with any of them being included. However in our minds at the moment, neither of them have done anything as of yet to unseat Aleks.

To further support your argument though, Aleks is hanging onto the spot by a thread to be honest. A win by Lesnar this weekend obviously kicks him right out of there and Overeem beating Cro Cop on New Year’s Eve would do the same.

The #10 spot has been tough on us in a few weight classes lately.  Either no one truly deserves it, or a bunch of guys have an equal push for it.  But we’ll continue to put it out there for debate!

thanks for responding… i love this site and am only so critical because i basically spend an hour a day on it

No problem TD. That’s awesome to know. Thanks for the support.

All Top 10s need to be taken with a grain of salt anyhow, MMA is such a fragile thing and opinions change in a heartbeat, often times by a single performance, sadly.
I tend to look at them as just general indications of how people look at fighters, but make my own decisions based on what I’ve seen in my own eyes. Fedor Emelianenko was bashed for not having fought quality competition in awhile going against Sylvia, and he made Sylvia look far, far worse than Hong Man Choi. Now all of a sudden everyone’s back on the wagon, Fedor is the #1 P4P, etc. It’s very fickle, and I admit I am often frustrated with people’s opinions sometimes and how fashionable they can be.
But everyone is ultimately entitled to their own opinion, regardless of how they got their. All that said, I disagree with some of the entries here as well but it’s a solid Top 10 and I can see how the choices were made.

I don’t think Paulo Filho should be in the top 10 of the Middleweight division! He didn’t even make weight at WEC 36, he weighed 7lbs over at original weigh-ins and then he didn’t even make weight at the 2nd weigh-ins! And all he did was lay on the mat and did nothing!

ehh, I think Filho is ranked decently.

Relatively speaking, MMA on Tap has great rankings, though the Aleks thing was such a glaring error (IMO) that I had to speak up. 

I feel that a great barometer for deciding on following website rankings is the fighter Sean Sherk.  To me, he’s easily a top 5 lightweight, and yet he’s rarely ranked that high, often missing in even top 10 rankings.  Sadly, there is a proclivity for many mma sites to highly overrate the japanese lightweights, and not give fighters like Sherk and Tyson Griffin, and even Clay Guida or Roger Huerta, their proper due.

We had Paulo Filho ranked #2 last rankings.  Despite an awful showing, we felt we couldn’t drop him from the rankings completely.  We’ll see what happens next fight.