UFC Lightweight Division - so what is the status at the end of the day?

Top 15 LW	Opponents Faced
Khabib Nurmagomedov	Justin Gaethje (win) Dustin Poirier (win) Conor McGregor (win) Al Iaquinta (win)
Justin Gaethje	Khabib Nurmagomedov (loss) Tony Ferguson (win) Donald Cerrone (win) Dustin Poirier (loss)
Dustin Poirier	Dan Hooker (win) Khabib Nurmagomedov (loss) Justin Gaethje (win) Diego Ferreira (win) Conor McGregor (loss)
Tony Ferguson	Justin Gaethje (loss) Donald Cerrone (win) Kevin Lee (win)
Conor McGregor	Donald Cerrone (win) Khabib Nurmagomedov (loss) Dustin Poirier (win)
Dan Hooker	Dustin Poirier (loss) Paul Felder (win) Al Iaquinta (win)
Charles Oliveira	Kevin Lee (win) Paul Felder (loss) Donald Cerrone (loss)
Paul Felder	Dan Hooker (loss) Charles Oliveira (win)
Diego Ferreira	Dustin Poirier (loss) Beneil Dariush (loss)
Al Iaquinta	Dan Hooker (loss) Donald Cerrone (loss) Kevin Lee (win) Khabib Nurmagomedov (loss)
Kevin Lee	Charles Oliveira (loss) Gregor Gillespie (win) Al Iaquinta (loss) Tony Ferguson (loss)
Beneil Dariush	Drew Dober (win) Diego Ferreira (win)
Islam Makhachev
Gregor Gillespie	Kevin Lee (loss)
Drew Dober	Beneil Dariush (loss)
Donald Cerrone	Conor McGregor (loss) Justin Gaethje (loss) Tony Ferguson (loss) Al Iaquinta (win) Charles Oliveira (win)

Khabib - Case for #1 P4P Goat

 1. Damage - one of the main reasons why I would put Khabib as #1 is damage. He has never really taken any kind of damage compared to Jon Jones or Fedor Emelianenko. Those guys at their best won and sometimes emphatically but also took a tremendous punishment especially on their feet. Fedor was nearly knocked out a couple of times while Jones really took a beating with Alexander Gustafson for one. 

GSP should for sure be in the discussion but when I look at the pure damage he took with Carlos Condit and Johny Hendricks, it is hard to consider that GSP actually won after you look at the damage he took. 

2. Dominance - I don't think the number of fights matters as much as the dominance factor. Jon Jones lost a lot of rounds to Gustaffson and with quite a few of his opponents his victory was very narrowly decided. Fedor was getting beaten up badly and often came back to win so it is difficult to even compare him to Khabib who tends to always be in control of the fight. 

3. Undefeated Record - there are just two fighters that we can say can try to argue that they were undefeated in their prime - Fedor and Jon Jones. Jones Jones arguably lost to Reyes and Santos however and even with Gustaffson it was a narrow victory indeed. 

GSP was defeated twice. 

Overall, Khabib is far ahead. Jones Jones I think could still be in the picture had it not been for his PED issue and the same really goes for Anderson. 

There are a lot of great fighters that have come and gone in MMA, but it is hard to imagine we will ever see such a legend as Khabib Nurmagomedov again and his legacy will stay in history forever. 

Dan Hooker Ranking? Bullshit

Dan Hooker is the nicest guy but ranking dynamics is just an example of how crooked the UFC ranking system really is. 

Lets go back in time to UFC 226 in July 2018 where he fought and beat Gilbert Burns, at the time an unranked opponent that we know now is coming up in the welterweight division. 

Dan Hooker fought him on the prelims and beating him gets him the #14 spot in the UFC rankings. 

Edson Barboza beats him end of 2018 so he goes down to #15. Edson was ranked #6 at the time, ok no big deal. 

July 2019, he beats #10th ranked James Vick - moves up to #14. Hard to give him much credit for Vick, given James Vick lost two fights in a row prior to facing Dan, but ok. 

He beats Al Iaquinta - October 2019 who was ranked # 6 before this fight - Dan goes to # 7 ... ok that's fine. 

Then he goes to face Paul Felder who was ranked #6 just before their fight 23 February 2020. This is where it starts to get weird. He beats Felder by split decision - i.e. not even clear who won and get the #5 spot? Cerrone gets beaten easily by McGregor is the reason perhaps. 

He loses to Dustin Poirer in June 2020, who is ranked#3 and loses but this does not affect him. Stays at #5 in the rankings. Strange..... but then between 15th of September and 21st of September something happens...... 

Conor was arrested on the 13th of September so the UFC took him down one spot and Hooker took his spot at #4!!! 

Why? did Conor or Hooker fight at this time for their rankings to change? NO, so why would UFC switch them around?  MYSTERY.....

Looking to Train During Covid? What You Should Do

 1. Contact the academies you can find either via website email or via Facebook / social media. Try to find out whether their classes are running and what is going on. 

A lot of the academies have out of date information on the website, be aware of this. 

Make sure you do this in advance to avoid disappointment!

Some academies require booking of classes either electronically or by phone, so don't forget to do this. 

2. Be prepared to sign up for longer term membership - during these Covid days, many academies only allow full time members. 

3. Bring a mask - obvious but be sure you don't forget. There may be different rules academy to academy about this. 

4. Don't turn up with a cold or with symptoms of any kind of flu - obvious, but if you do have some symptoms of a cold or flue, stay at home. There is no excuse for turning up to the academy with something that could affect your training partners and staff. 

Who are the top fighters in the UFC Light Weight Division?

 I admit that I am using only fighter fight data where they competed in UFC or other UFC owned organisation such as Strikeforce, Pride and others. I would argue that many of the smaller organisation wins don't really count since they were early in the career and at a much lower level. The only one that I should try to include in the future is Bellator where Justin Gaethje had a very successful run and for this reason he does not feature in the bar chart I preset. 

Just take a look at this table:

I have selected lightweight division fighters with more than 8 wins in the UFC & affiliates and less than 8 losses.

Most notably missing is Jutin Gaethje (Bellator excluded) and Islam Makhachev (only 7 wins in UFC). I think both of these guys deserve to be on the list and will probably make it on here soon. 

Its surprising though that there are only just a few guys that have managed to get 8 wins with less than 8 losses in the UFC and I think this one is a testament of how good these guys truly are. 

Of course there is also the issue that some fighters like BJ Penn fought passed their prime for too long accumulating losses as a result but because it is hard to see the cut off point between fighter in his prime and passed his prime, this cannot be reliably accounted for. 

Any comments, let me know. 

UFC LightWeight Division - a bit of stats

If you have been following Khabib's success thanks mainly to his incredible grappling ability in the UFC's lightweight division, take a look at this graph, showing the top 15 ranked UFC lightweight fighters at this time. 

Khabib has a perfect record which translates into a straight line in terms of cumulative wins on the x-axis. 

What is most curious is just how many fights Donald Cerrone has had and that he is still in the top-15, albeit barely so and probably not for long given the talk of his retirement. 

Yet here is more proof that Justin at least by the numbers is the greatest threat to Khabib. The purple line is closest to his, and then closely followed by the green line of Tony Ferguson. 

Below are the % of wins out of total fights for each top ranked fighter as well. 

Donald Cerrone         result    0.679245
Drew Dober             result    0.696970
Gregor Gillespie       result    0.928571
Islam Makhachev        result    0.947368
Beneil Dariush         result    0.791667
Kevin Lee_(fighter)    result    0.750000
Al Iaquinta            result    0.666667
Carlos Diego Ferreira  result    0.894737
Paul Felder            result    0.772727
Charles Oliveira       result    0.763158
Conor McGregor         result    0.846154
Dan Hooker             result    0.689655
Tony Ferguson          result    0.862069
Dustin Poirier         result    0.787879
Justin Gaethje         result    0.916667
Khabib Nurmagomedov    result    1.000000
dtype: float64

BJJ Coronavirus

These days with the Coronavirus are hard for us all!

The best thing to do is keep your cardio guys by doing hill running in my opinion and keep your head up!

It may be that in fact the Tony Ferguson vs Khabib fight is really that cursed that it took the Coronavirus to get this fight called off once again but hopefully the UFC and Dana White are stubborn enough to still get it to happen no matter what although I think the true chances of it happening are now lower with Khabib going back home.

As far as I know Russia has legally restricted travel and I don't think short of a special permission from the Russian authorities can travel outside of Russia. Foreigners are also not allowed into Russia and therefore a UFC event in Chechnya sounds highly unlikely despite what Joe Rogan and some of the media have been saying.