Why UFC Champion Cain Velasquez Is RIGHT About MMA Rankings (And Derek is wrong)

First, let me briefly introduce myself.  As it says above, my name is Tim Burke...I've also been known as a Beer Monster in some circles.  I'm what's commonly referred to as a hardcore MMA and K-1 fan.  I'm also a pretty decent scrabble player and the ladies seem to dig my eyelashes, but that's not important right now.  I've come to HKL to do two things - chew bubblegum and kick ass.  And I'm all out of Roddy Piper quotes, so I'll get down to it. 

This place has a variety of great writers offering up a mix of straight news and opinion pieces, and it's a veritable one-stop shop for combat sports aficionados like myself.  But it really is missing one thing - a contrarian.  Matt's too busy interviewing famous people, Brent's too busy digging up all the news you fans crave, and Sam and Elliott are busy guys.  Even Neil's got things goin on, yo.  So this gives Subo and Pace free reign to post whatever they want, and no one's available to offer a countering viewpoint in big bold front page print.  You see where I'm going with this?  Mr. Roth has been nice enough to set aside some space so yours truly can, for lack of a better term, put these two on blast.  Mostly Subo, because Anthony's pretty solid most of the time.  Anyway, let's roll...


Everyone's favorite clown prince of MMA writing Derek Suboticki wrote an article today referencing what Cain Velasquez had to say about rankings in MMA, and spiced it up with his obtuse view of things.  You see, Derek has a dream.  And that dream doesn't seem to have room for the words "competition", "Coker", or sometimes even "logic".  Cain's statement clearly described the reality of today's MMA world - everyone's not under the same roof.  It's the rest of it that we completely disagree on.

Here's what Cain said, since Derek wasn't even so nice as to quote him directly:

"We won't know unless we get in the same organization. Who's to say that I'm No. 1 or they're No. 1 if we haven't fought yet?"

"There are definitely great heavyweights that are fighting (in Strikeforce). I'm excited to watch that whole thing. The guys that fought in PRIDE – those guys are definitely the best, too."

"We'll never know until we all fight each other. But they're definitely the top guys. No joke about that."

I'll give Derek credit for one very prescient statement at the start of his tangent:

Cain's words are their own, but whether you interpret them as legitimate musings, professional courtesy or a yearning for a different MMA landscape depends largely on you.

That sentence is the jumping off point for this article.

Derek somehow uses the statement to conjure up a "what if" fantasy world where Cain stays with Strikeforce (an organization he only had a one fight deal with anyway) and doesn't end up achieving the lofty status he has today on the consensus leaderboard.  He uses this "second tier" mythology to prop up the idea that the top competition only exists under the Zuffa banner, so fighting elsewhere is essentially pointless from a ratings standpoint.  By using rankings as "reflective and not predictive", there's no way for a talent facing this second tier competition to ever get to the top of the rankings.

What?

Derek's entitled to his opinion here, of course.  Someone hired him after all.  But while his Strikeforce/college football comparison might have some merit if argued under a much different premise, the truth is that he's missing the entire point of Cain's statement.  This isn't about Cain in Strikeforce, Overeem in the UFC, or Sylvia in Super Troopers.  Cain's point is pretty simple, actually.

In today's MMA world, rankings don't mean a damn thing.  Nothing.  Nada.  Zero.

Don't believe me?  I'll let someone with some clout drop some knowledge after the jump then, aight?

Doing MMA rankings is ridiculous. Unless all fighters are competing under one banner it is ALL SPECULATION. Make no sense whatsoever

If OVEREEM can never fight CAIN how can you rank ONE ABOVE THE OTHER? You cannot. You can ONLY SPECULATE & speculation are not TRUE rankings

First off, don't get all up in arms about the Overeem/Cain comparison.  No people, Overeem doesn't have a case for the vaunted (and imagined!)  # 1.  That's not his point, so cool your jets.

My new friends, these are the tweets of one Michael Schiavello.  Needless to say, he knows his stuff.  He sent these out just after Cain's words became public and the MMA media kicked them around like a Goodman (a can...you'll get my humor eventually).  Derek would probably take these Voice statements as further proof of his hypothesis - that the one banner thing is most important.  But that's not what they're getting at.  Voice and Cain are being realists.  They're not dreamers like you, Derek.  They're living in the now, and they understand that not every MMA fight is going to be preceeded by cheeseball gladiator music and annoying Goldberg-isms anytime soon.  Sorry man.

Simply put, all that stuff we put so much effort into arguing about?  That stuff is just someone's semi-educated opinion.  There's not enough data available to make logical, reasonable rankings in today's environment.  As esteemed writer Neil Manich said, they're just a point of discussion.  Sorry guys, but they have no relevance to anyone or anything. 

Whether that's good or bad is irrelevant - it's reality.  Rankings have as much substance as Subo's Zuffa Dreams do...basically, they're just something to discuss and ultimately ridicule.  Mr Suboticki would probably rather not address this point.  I'm sure the guy that offered me this fancy writing space, Mr. Roth, isn't particularly happy either after reading this, since I'm kinda throwing him under the bus by saying this as well.  Why, you ask?.  Well, Mr Roth and Mr Suboticki are two of the fifteen-odd lucky souls that contribute to the SB Nation/USA Today Consensus Rankings.  The grand poobah of MMA rankings.  The realest of the real..ish.  So if you never see another article from me...I think it's pretty obvious why.

This needed to be written though because, as Peter Griffin says, this kind of stuff really grinds my gears.  Derek diplomatically plays it off as his interpretation of what Cain said.  Great.  Woopity-doo.  It fits into the Subo narrative you'll soon learn to either appreciate or mock, depending on where you stand or how naive you are.  Well, this is MY interpretation, and this might be my only moment to shine up in this sumbitch, so I'm gonna sing it loud and proud:

People...Cain Velasquez ain't propping up your beloved rankings.  He's actually tearing them down, and you can't even see it.  Schiavello is spelling it out for you.  I'm spelling it out for you.  Why can't you see it? 

I await your response.


And next time (if there is one!) I promise to write about something a helluva lot more relevant than rankings, because I hope me n Cain n Voice just drove a stake into 'em and killed 'em dead.   My next article will be about how Badr Hari is top guy in MMA, K-1, and checkers.  If you would like to read it, say so.  If you'd like me to go back to banning the unfortunate at BE, say so.  Just say something because Roth needs the comments, okay?