If you follow me on Instagram you may have seen the first round of amateur fighter rankings which strictly covered South Florida. Many people viewed the list and there was a clear need to expand.
The rankings will start releasing July 1
Methodology
Eligible fighters must have fought an MMA bout in Florida within the last 12 months. To be eligible for a weight class the fight must have been in that weight class. Fighters were only considered for one weight class so if they fought at multiple weights in the past 12 months they were put in the list with their primary weight class.
Fighters in each weight class were then given an eligible list of fighters to vote for and gave me their top ten fighters. In the prior list, the voting was composed of promoters. media, match makers, and other fight related personnel. This time it is strictly a peer-influenced list.
Rankings are calculated using a point system. A first place vote is worth ten points. A second place vote is worth nine points. This pattern continues until tenth place, which is worth one point. Points are tallied and fighters are ranked with minor adjustments explained below.
Fight related personnel will still be involved with this edition's voting, however, they will only be voting for the pound-for-pound list.
Any self-votes were factored out and for any fighter that did not return their list to me, they received between an 8% and 15% deduction in points, depending on how strongly their vote would effect the standings. This is to prevent fighters from being rewarded with higher spots for not voting. Example: John Doe has 55 points while Jake Smith has 54 points. Jake voted for John in first place, but John did not vote at all. Theoretically, John would probably vote Jake in the top ten which would move Jake up the rankings.
Additionally, if a fighter lost their most recent fight to someone ranked immediately below them and the fight took place in the last four months, I put the winner of the fight ahead. I only did this in cases where it was either a clear decision victory or the fighter finished the fight. Therefore, David Camacho being ranked ahead of Yancarlos Guerra does not warrant a change because the fight was close. However Ethan Goff was pushed ahead of Austin Tadlock because Goff won with clear margins.
Tapology already has rankings, why do this?
Tapology's rankings are a great starting point but there are several flaws with only going off of Tapology. The first problem is that their ranking is done by a computer generated system, there is no human influence. This created many times where you will see fighters ranked below people they have finished or beat. This system makes a pretty record too influential. Additionally, it does not consider the context of fighters and their weight classes. For example if a fighter goes 7-0 at featherweight and 1-0 at lightweight, Tapology's system considers the entire 8-0 record for both weight classes. This creates extremely inaccurate rankings.
The next problem is promotions do not always report results to Tapology. This means that the system which is already flawed has less information to work off of and punishes some fighters rankings unfairly.
Finally, as mentioned before, a computer cannot see what a human does. In order to rank fighters, it is most important to actually be able to watch them fight.
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