I was reading a comment today by p123, and I was surprised to find some actual logic being used. I have a little to how a comment factors into a fighter's legacy and ranking;

"Rankings should just be used like this.

Contender Level
Mid Tier
Low Tier

The numerical rankings is silly.

Pettis / Bendo / Guida / Miller are all contender tier.

Does is mean a Mid Tier can’t beat a Contender? Of course not. But typically, the Contender Level is going to beat the Mid Tier level 9 out of 10 times. Which is what pushes for their to be seperate tiers.

A tier list makes a lot more sense than a numerical ranking.

Also, some fight styles will always be troublesome for some styles. For instance, Sonnen can easily beat some of the top strikers and wrestlers in the world, but his BJJ is so horrid, some low level MMA guy, who has elite BJJ, is likely to beat him 9 out of 10 times.

Those things are hard to quantify, but we should at least make notes of it."

Rankings should be in three leveled categories; 1. Elite/World Beater Level "Anderson Silva", 2. Occasional sparks of brilliance "Gatekeeper" Tier, 3. "Kimbo Slice" Tier.

I put numbers, because let's face it, people actually like numbers. It's just how people like to organize thing. It's just how most human brains process and store information (look into developmental biology and psychological development).

Do upsets happen at all levels, yes, i.e. Houston Alexander doing better then expected (Knocking out Keith Jardine), or i.e. Randy Couture's entire career (upsets and lossses). Some times it’s unclear where guys fall, and it changes over the course of their career and how the mma game evolves. Also factoring in having a bad night, being reckless (Matt Serra vs GSP, Mark Hominick vs Chan-Sung Jung) or health probelms (Mike Brown's last bad stretch). Not trying to take away anything from guys who pull of amazing upsets (Matt Serra, Keith Jardine, etc..), but judge a guy by his entire career (i.e. Fedor). Fedor’s legacy is tarnished, but give the man some God damn credit. In the same stroke Randy Couture and Forrest Griffin deserve accolades. MMA fans are extremely fickle bandwagon jumpers. Rankings are needed to make fights (along with styles and ticket sales factored in), but don't flush away a guys entire legacy. Fedor's legacy will always outweigh the majority of heavyweights, regardless of his later ranking. Guys like Kenny Florian are also hard to rank since he had some amazing wins, but defeats to only highly ranked fighters.

"So you want to be a F**King" fighter as Dana White most famously said on Ultimate Fighter. For a guy that does and risks everything, look at his entire sequence of fights and the time period. All I am saying is be fair, I'm looking at you trolls and bandwagon jumpers. Remember that as new stars emerge like Jon Jones. I usually just lurk mania threads, but I was surprised to see a logical comment. Anyone else have a few thoughts?