The World Alliance of Mixed Martial Arts – WAMMA – has re-emerged from MMA’s graveyard in recent weeks to make a series of announcements related to new business partnerships and staff restructuring. Then the organizaiton took another step forward on Monday in announcing their latest series of MMA rankings.
Below is an abridged copy of their release:
NEW YORK
(August 31, 2009) –- The World Alliance of Mixed Martial Arts (WAMMA) today released the August rankings for its Men’s Division, the first set of rankings released under newly appointed Rankings Committee Chairman Andrew Falzon.
“We are very fortunate to have such an extensive panel of rankers,” said Falzon. “This broad contingent of contributors has established the WAMMA rankings as the most comprehensive rankings in the sport of MMA.”
WAMMA’s combined panel of rankers represent a wide spectrum of the MMA media, CBSSportsline.com, ESPN’s MMA Live!, Fox News Fight Game with Mike Straka, FoxSports.com, MMA Fanhouse, Sirius Fight Club Radio, Sports Illustrated, The Calgary Sun Newspaper and The Fight Network.
The rankings are available online at: www.GoWAMMA.com/rankings
Payout Perspective:
It’s still way too early to tell whether WAMMA will be a success this time around. The organization has taken some positive steps in the past few weeks, but many questions remain as to how they will use their new partnership with Brand Asset Digital; or what kind of world body they plan to be without the cooperation of the world’s largest MMA promotion, the UFC.
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The idea of fighter rankings is a quite interesting one. They don’t necessarily add value from a sporting perspective in the sense that they’re rarely influential – especially within a sport that’s far from fully developed and mature (although I suppose that this is WAMMA’s ultimate goal). However, they do act as a lightning rod for debate amongst MMA enthusiasts, which helps to draw interest and attention for the sport through publicity and media discussion.
The problem that I have with rankings is well summarized in the following criteria item for WAMMA’s rankings, something pretty common amongst all rankings:
2. Quality of wins
What caliber of opponent has fighter’s wins come against? Greater credit should go to a fighter who has a win over a fighter widely viewed as top ten. A certain degree should be considered for an opponent viewed as top 15 and adjusted accordingly for top 20, top 25, etc.What fashion is a fighter recording his wins? Is he dominant against his opponents? Is he able to finish his opponents? A fighter that can finish fights in a dominant fashion on a consistent basis should be viewed as one that is separating himself from others.
What if these “widely viewed” opponents are also frauds?
It sort of creates a self-perpetuating cycle of deception whereby fighters can build their ranking through a record mirage of cans and victories over opponents that are similarly over-hyped.
Subjectivity doesn’t just exist in the way panelists evaluate fighter skill, but also the way they evaluate degree of competition in the context of the promoting organization. Some people consider MMA’s top competition to only consist of those fighters in the UFC; while others are perhaps more generous with fighters that fight out of the UFC than they normally would be if said fighter were in the UFC.
Scott Smith and Robbie Lawler are pretty good examples of fighters that were run out of the UFC, yet they’ve also been given a ton of respect from the MMA community simply from their headlining matches in EliteXC.
There’s also the argument that the sport of MMA itself doesn’t mesh well with rankings; rather, rankings are simply just another antiquated carry over from the sport of boxing. Why? MMA is unique in the sense that anything can happen at any moment; and, especially when you get to the top 5-10 guys in most divisions, anyone can beat anybody. Is the guy at #4 really better than the guy at #5? Does it even matter?
Moreover, the rate of ascension and decline in a fighter’s ability is staggering. In just over a year, Chuck Liddell went from being the toast of the UFC to a forced retirement. A win over Chuck Liddell today doesn’t really mean anything – certainly not as much as it would have two years ago. It also begs the question, was Chuck ever as good as most proclaimed? If so was his ranking as #1 in the LHW division more accurately a reflection of his association with the UFC and not his true status within the worldwide division?
Rankings attempt to apply a static, consistent, and all-encompassing formula to a very short-term, fluid, and “what have you done for me lately?” type of sport.
Matchmakers are more concerned with who a fighter has beaten in the last year, how convincing were those victories, and in what context were those victories significant within the division. It doesn’t matter what a fighter’s record is or who he beat three years ago.
And, to me, this raises another interesting question in regards to WAMMA: can they base their organization on an antiquated system, will they shift the focus away from their rankings, or will they find a new formula that better fits the sport of MMA?
Since MMAPayout.com has been encouraging discussion and commentary lately, I expect this to fuel further debate.
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