Fifteen votes will determine the new rankings for Bellator MMA in every weight category.
The organization officially released its fighter rankings panel on
Thursday via press release, which will allow for 15 MMA media
members to select the top-10 fighters in each Bellator division:
heavyweight, light heavyweight, middleweight, welterweight,
lightweight, featherweight, bantamweight, women’s featherweight and
women’s flyweight. Beyond selecting fighters from seven men’s
categories and two for women, the voters will be picking
pound-for-pound fighters for both men and women. Bellator will be
using a third-party firm called Combat Registry to count the votes
and prepare the lists, which will come from votes following every
Bellator event. Sherdog.com was asked to join the panel, but opted
not to participate in the process.
Twenty percent of the panel will be constituted of MMA Junkie staff
members, with George Garcia, Nolan King and John Morgan
participating. MMA Weekly will have the second-largest individual
pull of any one outlet, with both Jeff Cain and Ken Pishna
representing. CBS Sports, the broadcast partner of Bellator, will
also include on voting member, with Brian Campbell receiving a
vote. FanSided will have a say on the process, with Amy Kaplan
voting. The remaining media companies allowing their staff to
participate include Claro Sports, KHON Hawaii, The MMA Report,
South China Morning Post, Newsday, TASS Russia, Fightful MMA and
Cageside Press.
The inaugural rankings list will drop shortly before Bellator 255
on April 2. Champions of their respective divisions will
automatically sit stop the list in their weight category, or in the
case of Patricio
Freire, categories. Fighters will be eligible to be ranked
after their first Bellator match. Inactivity will disqualify a
fighter from the rankings list after 15 months without competing.
In the event of a fighter retiring, the competitor will still be
eligible to be ranked for two months after their retirement, and
then Bellator will make the determination on if the retired fighter
can remain.
Should a fighter be suspended for non-medical reasons for at least
six months, they will not be allowed to be ranked. Bellator will
assume control over whether a fighter should be ranked in a
specific weight category, and tournaments will not remove a fighter
from the rankings in their other weight group – for example,
Ryan
Bader could be ranked at light heavyweight while also staying
the champion at heavyweight. The 15-month inactivity provision
applies to fighters that change weight classes, as long as a
fighter has fought in that other division at least once.
As it stands, Bellator reserves the right to determine the final
list of eligible fighters that can be ranked. This potential
restriction as to how many fighters will be provided in each
selection process is yet unclear, even though Bellator stated that
a fighter should be eligible for rankings as long as they have
competed at least once in the Bellator cage. In comparison, the
Ultimate Fighting Championship does not allow
for its official rankings panel to vote on every fighter in any
given weight class, and instead limits voters to a specific number
of possible selections.