Welcome to the latest update to the MMA Fighting pound-for-pound rankings, where every month our esteemed panel sort through the noise to answer one question: Who are the best overall male and female MMA fighters in the world?
This time around, we’re only looking at the men’s side as Dana White’s No. 1 guy Jon Jones returned to the octagon at UFC 309 to successfully defend his heavyweight title with a dominant win over Stipe Miocic. Let’s see where that performance placed Jones on our list after he was briefly removed for inactivity.
MEN’S POUND-FOR-POUND
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Jon Jones got what he wanted at UFC 309. But that doesn’t mean he’s entitled to the No. 1 spot in the pound-for-pound rankings.
That’s at least how the staff at MMA Fighting sees it, even after Jones ran through future Hall of Fame inductee Stipe Miocic in Saturday’s main event. Jones made the 42-year-old Miocic, a two-time UFC champion, look amateurish at times, and he wrapped up his first defense of the heavyweight title with a fantastic spin kick to the body that proved to be the beginning of the end.
It’s no secret that the build-up to the contest was rocky at best, with Jones and Miocic originally booked to fight 12 months ago. Jones suffered a pectoral injury and the bout was postponed, leaving both fighters on the sidelines while top-ranked heavyweight Tom Aspinall claimed an interim crown and established himself as Jones’ rightful No. 1 contender.
Whether Jones’ reluctance to fight Aspinall factored into how our panel voted this month is unclear, but one thing is certain: Jones didn’t just fail to reclaim the top spot, he isn’t even in our top 5. It turns out scoring a win over an opponent who hadn’t fought since 2021, hasn’t won since 2020, and immediately retired afterward doesn’t move the needle, even if that opponent is a legend like Miocic.
Peeling back the curtain, Jones ranked as high as No. 4 on our ballots (behind some combination of Islam Makhachev, Alex Pereira, and Ilia Topuria), and as low as No. 12. Actually, that’s inaccurate, because one panelist left him off completely. If you’ve followed our coverage of the Jones-Aspinall drama this past year, it shouldn’t surprise you who is responsible for the Jones snub.
Without further adieu, ladies and gentlemen, it’s Mr. Jed Meshew!
Meshew: Why did I leave Jon Jones out of my pound-for-pound rankings? Well it’s pretty simple: he shouldn’t be in there.
While Dana White may not understand the difference between current pound-for-pound discussions and Greatest of All Time discussions, I do, and Jones’s case for being a top pound-for-pound fighter at this moment in time is highly specious.
Jones has three wins this decade: a highly controversial decision over Dominick Reyes, a demolition of Ciryl Gane, and his tidy thumping of Miocic this past weekend.
Quite frankly, only the Gane win is meaningful. Reyes should have been a loss (and look where Reyes is now) and I’m not sure Stipe would be a top-15 heavyweight at this moment in time. (Also, heavyweight and light heavyweight are garbo divisions).
Very seriously, anyone ranking Jones highly at this point is doing it almost entirely based on a 17-year resume and not with regard to what he’s accomplished recently. That’s certainly a way to approach this topic, but it’s one I believe to be silly. I want to reward fighters actively getting meaningful wins over relevant opposition. Jones is possibly the greatest fighter of all time, but his recent résumé is decided lacking.
There you have it.
Speaking for myself, I was one of the panelists who had Jones at No. 4 and, as Jed points out, it’s primarily because of his accomplishments at light heavyweight. I can’t completely dismiss the Gane and Miocic wins either, though those alone aren’t enough to convince me to push him past elite fighters who have been putting in work in recent years.
Jon Jones. No. 8 pound-for-pound. Discuss.
Lastly, a refresher on some ground rules:
- The six-person voting panel consists of MMA Fighting staffers Alexander K. Lee, Guilherme Cruz, Mike Heck, E. Casey Leydon, Damon Martin and Jed Meshew.
- Updates to the rankings will be completed following every UFC pay-per-view. Fighters will be removed from the rankings if they do not compete within 18 months of their most recent bout.
- Should a fighter announce their retirement, our panel will decide whether that fighter should immediately be removed from the rankings or maintain their position until further notice (let’s put it this way: we’d have taken Khabib Nurmagomedov out of our rankings a lot quicker than the UFC did).
As a reminder, the notion of pound-for-pound supremacy is always going to inherently be subjective. When you’re debating whether someone like Sean Strickland should be ranked above someone like Charles Oliveira, there is no true right answer. In other words: It’s not serious business, folks.
Thoughts? Questions? Concerns? Make your voice heard in the comments below.
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