The pound for pound rankings have always been a ‘best guess’ type of list. It is not realistic to take one person’s record at middleweight and compare it to a flyweight’s. Then by using mystical MMA math be expected to compute who is better overall. There are so many variables like depth of division, active top ranked competitors, how many active former champs, number of finishes, how many rounds total a fighter has lost compared to his opponents, and so on. Those are just a few off the top of our head and there are realistically hundreds more. None of them could truly come up with the best answer because it is all speculation.

That being said….

Looking at the UFC’s current listings of their active athletes they may be as close to spot on as possible. With Jon Jones returning off of suspension, Khabib’s destruction of Conor McGregor, and Tyron Woodley’s dominance there are a lot of things to consider as the UFC staff when ranking your roster.

Daniel Cormier is a no brainer for number one and anyone who says otherwise is just plain crazy. He didn’t theoretically fight the heavyweight champ, no sir. Then light heavyweight king DC went up in weight, fought champ Stipe Miocic, and won. Down at number three is Jon Jones who is the last man to defeat Daniel Cormier back at UFC 182 in January of 2015. Yes we know he knocked out Cormier at UFC 214 but it stands as a no contest due to Jones failing another USADA test so it cannot be factored in here. Interesting to note as well is Conor McGregor’s fall to #8 on this list. Ouch.

Here is the official list from UFC.com…

POUND-FOR-POUND
1 Daniel Cormier
2 Khabib Nurmagomedov
3 Jon Jones *NR
4 TJ Dillashaw -1
5 Max Holloway -1
6 Georges St-Pierre -1
7 Tyron Woodley -1
8 Conor McGregor
9 Stipe Miocic +1
10 Henry Cejudo -1
11 Cris Cyborg
12 Robert Whittaker
13 Tony Ferguson
14 Amanda Nunes
15 Rose Namajunas

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