Powered by Max Banner Ads 

While the UFC has certainly upped it’s talent pool with the addition of many fighters from the Pride Fighting Championships, the UFC welterweight division has always been deep in talent.

In fact, our top two fighters each hold wins over each other and our #3 fighter holds the title. Hold on for a bumpy ride as I try to justify my top five UFC welterweight rankings.

5. Jon Fitch is #5 on my top UFC welterweight list. While the UFC marketing machine has been busy promoting Diego Sanchez and Josh Koscheck, Jon Fitch has been slowly building what is the best record in the welterweight division. In fact, Fitch has not been defeated since 2002. He’s beaten Luigi Fioravanti, Thiago Alves, Josh Burkman, Jeff Joslin and Shonie Carter on route to his current thirteen fight winner streak. Unfortunately Fitch has yet to fight any of the fighters in our top 4, something that will be corrected at UFC 76 when he meets our #4 fighter, Diego Sanchez.

4. Diego Sanchez has a near perfect mixed martial arts record. He’s gone 20 wins with only one defeat. That defeat came at the hands of Josh Koscheck at UFC 69. Diego was going through some health problems at the time, it turned out to be a staph infection in his leg, and probably didn’t fight up to his potential. Wins over Nick Diaz, Karo Parisyan, Joe Riggs and Kenny Florian put Diego up near the big boys in the 170lb weight class.

3. Matt Serra is the current UFC welterweight kingpin. He earned his crown by defeating Georges St Pierre at UFC 69. He not only defeated Georges St Pierre, but humiliated him with a first round knockout. This is the first time that Serra has shown really aggressive, effective striking in the Octagon; I hope it continues. One thing Serra has shown is brilliant Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. He’s used those skills in wins over Chris Lytle, Yves Edwards and near decision losses to “The Prodigy”, BJ Penn and Din Thomas.

2. Matt Hughes is the former UFC welterweight champion. He lost his belt to Georges St Pierre, but not before he had a chance to build up wins over Goerges St Piere, Sean Sherk, Frank Trigg, BJ Penn, Carlos Newton and another MMA legend you may have heard of, Royce Gracie.

1. Georges St Pierre has lost to both the #2 and #3 ranked fighters on this list, so how can I justify ranking Georges #1? Call it gut feeling, call it favoritism, I don’t know but what I do know is that Georges St Pierre is the best welterweight fighter in the UFC. Georges does not only have wins over Frank Trigg and Sean Sherk, but dominant, one sided wins. While Matt Hughes struggled with these guys early, Georges just steam rolled them. The same can be said of his second fight with Hughes where St Pierre’s striking and take down defense made it a one sided match up. St Pierre has also defeated BJ Penn, in a close decision, Karo Parisyan and most recently Georges surprised the MMA community by out wrestling Josh Koscheck on way to a decisive victory. Georges is back on track and ready to face the winner of Hughes vs Serra.

Matt Hughes and Matt Serra will fight following the conclusion of the Ultimate Fighter “Team Hughes vs Team Serra” reality show. I believe that Georges St Pierre will face the winner of that fight. The truth is, with a talent pool as deep as the UFC welterweight division any one of the top 6 or 7 fighters in the division (add in Karo and Josh) could beat any other one on any given night. That makes every fight in this division exciting!

The UFC, or Ultimate Fighting Championship, is currently recognized as the largest MMA promotion worldwide, is headquartered in Las Vegas, Nevada. The UFC began as a tournament to find the best fighters in the world, and was based on the Brazilian vale tudo fighting style. Originally, it was known as a no holds barred fighting contest, which eventually led to accusations of human brutality. After criticism reduced the UFCs visibility was diminished by these accusations, the organization reformed itself and adapted strict, athletic commission sanctioned rules, remarketing itself as a legitimate sporting event.

This idea of a tournament geared towards finding the best world fighter was that of Art Davie, a Southern California based advertising executive who developed this concept while researching marital arts for a client. Davie went on to become the student of Rorion Gracie, a teacher of mixed martial arts. In 1992, Gracie, Davie, and John Milnus, a film director and screen writer, in addition to being a fellow Gracie student, developed a business plan to generate the initial capital required to start WOW Promotions in order to develop their tournament into a television franchise.

The fledgling company partnered with Semaphore Entertainment Group in 1993, and the name Ultimate Fighting Championship was born. The first event was produced at McNichos Sports Arena in Denver, Colorado on November 12,1993 and featured kick boxer Patrick Smith and Kevin Roier, and as well as savate fighter Gerard Gordeau, and others. The appeal for this how, including its core proposition can a wrestler beat a boxer? was a contrast from most martial arts events at the time, where competitors typically had skill and expertise in just one discipline and little to no experience in other disciplines.

In 2001, The UFC was purchased for $2 million and came under the control of its parent company Zuffia, which resulted in a return to pay per view for the UFC after a plunge into relative obscurity after Senator John McCain criticized it as human cockfighting. The UFCs secured spot on The Best Damn Sports Show Period only added to its renown and reputation. After being featured in the reality television series, American Casino, the UFC was featured in its own reality series, The Ultimate Fighter, showcasing up and coming MMA fighters. The success of this show led to a second show UFC Unleashed, which featured select fights from UFC events, as well as a live broadcast entitled UFC Fight Night. After the first season of the Ultimate fighter, the first UFC event drew a pay per view audience of 280,000, and the next season of The Ultimate Fighter drew in a record 410,000 pay per view buys, leading to the present, with the UFC holding its own in the world of mainstream sporting events.

The UFC, or Ultimate Fighting Championship, is currently recognized as the largest MMA promotion worldwide, is headquartered in Las Vegas, Nevada and owned by Zuffa LLC. The UFC began as a tournament to find the best fighters in the world, and was based on the Brazilian vale tudo fighting style.

Originally, it was known as a no holds barred fighting contest, which eventually led to accusations of human brutality. After criticism reduced the UFCs visibility was diminished by these accusations, the organization reformed itself and adapted strict, athletic commission sanctioned rules, remarketing itself as a legitimate sporting event.

This idea of a tournament geared towards finding the best world fighter was that of Art Davie, a Southern California based advertising executive who developed this concept while researching marital arts for a client. Davie went on to become the student of Rorion Gracie, a teacher of mixed martial arts. In 1992, Gracie, Davie, and John Milnus, a film director and screen writer, in addition to being a fellow Gracie student, developed a business plan to generate the initial capital required to start WOW Promotions in order to develop their tournament into a television franchise.

The fledgling company partnered with Semaphore Entertainment Group in 1993, and the name Ultimate Fighting Championship was born. The first event was produced at McNichos Sports Arena in Denver, Colorado on November 12,1993 and featured kick boxer Patrick Smith and Kevin Roier, and as well as savate fighter Gerard Gordeau, and others. The appeal for this how, including its core proposition can a wrestler beat a boxer? was a contrast from most martial arts events at the time, where competitors typically had skill and expertise in just one discipline and little to no experience in other disciplines.

In 2001, The UFC was purchased for $2 million and came under the control of its parent company Zuffia, which resulted in a return to pay per view for the UFC after a plunge into relative obscurity after Senator John McCain criticized it as human cockfighting. The UFCs secured spot on The Best Damn Sports Show Period only added to its renown and reputation. After being featured in the reality television series, American Casino, the UFC was featured in its own reality series, The Ultimate Fighter, showcasing up and coming MMA fighters.

The success of this show led to a second show UFC Unleashed, which featured select fights from UFC events, as well as a live broadcast entitled UFC Fight Night. After the first season of the Ultimate fighter, the first UFC event drew a pay per view audience of 280,000, and the next season of The Ultimate Fighter drew in a record 410,000 pay per view buys, leading to the present, with the UFC holding its own in the world of mainstream sporting events.

The last decade of the twentieth century saw the rise of a new popular sport that encompassed many attributes of ancient styles of unarmed hand-to-hand combat. This newly emerged sport was first referred to as “no hold barred” fighting. With the blending of styles that included not only wrestling and boxing but also various forms of oriental unarmed combat this new sport became known as Mixed Martial Arts.

The first MMA competitions enforced few rules and included both grappling and striking movements and used both arms and legs as offensive weapons of attack. The combat between opponents was allowed whether standing or on the ground. Primarily only such tactics as eye gouging and hair pulling were disallowed and even groin punches, while frowned upon, were not illegal. With MMA being described in the news media as “human cock fighting”, it might have been a short-lived sport had it not been for the creation of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) tournaments designed by the Californian Art Davie.

Davie, an advertising executive developed the idea from his association with Rorion Gracie, a teacher of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Being fascinated with the ability of these non-traditional fighters to defeat even high-ranking combatants of the traditional forms of unarmed combat, Davie developed WoW Productions (War of the Worlds). He then raised the funding for the first official MMA tournament and gained a contract with the new pay-per-view Semaphore Entertainment Group (SEG) to televise the event.

”The Ultimate Fighting Championship” aired on November 12, 2003 and became an instant hit. UFC1 drew 86,592 television subscribers who thrilled to the eight man elimination tournament that featured specialists in such diverse fighting forms as kickboxing, savate, karate, shootfighting, sumo, jiu-jitsu and boxing. Rorion Gracie’s brother Royce, a black-belt Brazilian jiu-jitsu fighter, took the first UFC tournament crown.

With the reputation as a violent, rule-less bloodfest, MMA and the Ultimate Fighting Championship came under harsh penalties from the lawmakers of many states and was, for a while, banned from pay-per-view television and some states entirely. However, the sport began to work with various United States sanctioning agencies to develop a safer competition environment. Various holds and maneuvers were banned and time limits were set on the individual rounds. By the end of the year 2000, UFC28 made its comeback under the sanctioning of the New Jersey State Athletic Control Board’s “Unified Rules”.

Opponents of this fighting sport applauded the new, restricted form of MMA as a safer sport despite the findings of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine that; “Knockout rates are lower in MMA competitions than in boxing. This suggests a reduced risk of traumatic brain injury in MMA competitions when compared to other events involving striking.” To date there has been only one fatality related to sanctioned UFC competition in the United States. This is a drastically lower rate than what has occurred in professional boxing.

Despite the troubled and controversial beginnings of MMA and the UFC, the sport continues to grow in popularity. Now televised in thirty-six countries, the UFC has grown offices in both Canada and the Unite Kingdom and are beginning to expand into the continent with the aim of creating a European UFC organization in the near future.

The UFC has recently absorbed the World Extreme Cage fighting organization and has developed corporate sponsorships that include such sports-promoting companies as Anheuser-Busch and Harley-Davidson motors.

It seems fitting with UFC 77 right around the corner, with Rich Franklin fighting current UFC middleweight champion Anderson Silva to give my UFC middleweight top 5 rankings now.

The UFC middleweight division is probably the weakest in all of the UFC. By weakest I mean that there is one clear cut champion, a clear cut second and then everyone else is way below. Mixed Martial Arts has come a long way in a very short period of time, so things could change overnight. Let’s get started with my rankings.

5. Chris Leben; I think most MMA fans would not include Chris Leben in the top 5 of the UFC middleweight division, but Leben is coming off an impressive come from behind win over a very tough Terry Martin and fought a close decision loss with Kalib Starnes. I personally thought that the Starnes fight was a draw or even a narrow Leben victory.

The thing I’ve been most impressed with lately with Leben is his ground game. Sure, he’s not at the level of Jason MacDonald or Travis Lutter yet, but he’s defended very well and even attempted some submissions in the Starnes fight. It’s clear after his loss to MacDonald Silva that Chris Leben has gone back to the drawing board and made some real improvements to his game.

4. Jason MacDonald had a real streak going before he met Rich “Ace” Franklin. He had back to back wins over ultimate fighters Ed Herman and Chris Leben winning both fights by submission. MacDonald had a bit of a set back when he faced recently de-throned champion Rich Franklin. This fight showed just how big of a gap there is in the UFC middleweight division, but MacDonald is taking it all in stride and a recent victory at UFC 72 over Rory Singer shows that “The Athlete” is back on track. Jason MacDonald takes on Yushin Okami at UFC 77, likely to see who will face the winner of Anderson Silva and Rich Franklin.

3. Yushin Okami and Jason MacDonald have both faced Rich Franklin, but neither has faced middleweight champion Anderson Silva. Since Okami got less beaten up by Franklin than MacDonald did, I give him the #3 spot. I think that if Okami had committed himself earlier in the fight he would have possibly decisioned Franklin.

2. Rich Franklin is defintely deserving of his #2 status. He has defeated both the third and fourth best fighters in the division and deserves to get his title rematch against Anderson Silva. Until Silva arrived on the scene, it looked like Rich Franklin would remain on top of the middleweight mountain for quite a while. Franklin took a beating at the hands of Silva and I’m interested to see what improvements he has made to his game/strategy for the rematch.

1. Anderson Silva is the best middleweight in the UFC, maybe the best middleweight in the world. Real MMA fans would love to see a bout between Matt Lindland and Anderson Silva to decide the best MMA middleweight, but since Lindland doesn’t fight in the UFC we have Anderson Silva reigning supreme. His dominant performances against Chris Leben, Rich Franklin, Travis Lutter and most recently Nate Marquardt indicate true dominance. In fact, in his last 4 fights only one has gone into the second round and they represent only 10 minutes of total fight time.

Anderson Silva is extremely comfortable throwing punches from all angles. He isn’t afraid of being taken down, so he allows himself to take risks throwing big flying knees and other high profile strikes. It’s that kind of fighting which will both keep Anderson on or near the top of the middleweight division for quite some time. Fans love to see the big strikes and there is nothing more satisfying than a KO.

That rounds out the UFC middleweight top 5. Time to start working on the UFC heavyweight top 5, but with the departure of Randy Couture and the recent signing to M-1 of Fedor Emelianenko, that could be a real chore.