As 2010 kicked off, everyone wanted to give the best of the ‘00s list. It’s a fun thing to do because you get to take the clean decade and evaluate it. So with that, I tackled who would be the UFC fighter of the ‘00s (obviously, only UFC fights count).  I really wanted to come up with a point system that could somehow rank the fighters. What I came up with is probably terribly flawed, but it certainly has some merit. At the very least, it’s an indicator for how successful they were.

The Points

3 Points for every win- winning is the name of any game, so credit must be given. Sure, there are going to be bad decisions, and other “fluke” wins, but I win is a win.

-1 Point for every loss- while a win is a win, not all losses are bad.

0 Points for a Draw- like kissing your sister, no points.

1 Point for a KO, Submission, or TKO- credit should be given for ending a fight.

-2 for a 1st round loss- while not all losses are bad, first round losses suck.

1 point for a title fight- winning titles is pinnacle of the sport; usually you have to earn title fights, so credit should be given.

2 Points for a successful titles defense- winning the title is one thing, defending it is much harder.

So there you have the point system. In a perfect world, I think its pretty fair. As with any decade awards, longevity helps.  In the instances with interim belts, they are counted as title fights, and when co-champs faced each other; both guys are defending (GSP v Serra for example).  The one thing I did not factor was the subjective; quality of opponent. I wanted to take out any subjective point for this exercise. Lastly, I didn’t rank every fighter. I tried to rank all champions, but some I did skip (Miletich, Serra, Belfort, Barnett and Lesnar) due to lack for fights in the time period. So, who is the total points winner?

Top 10, in reverse order

#10- Tim Sylvia 41pts

#9- Andrei Arlovski 42pts

#8- Randy Couture 47pts (Most title fights 14)

#7- Rich Franklin 50pts

#6- Tito Ortiz 52pts

#5- BJ Penn 54pts

#4- Anderson Silva 55pts

#3- Chuck Liddell 57pts

#2- Georges St-Pierre 59pts

#1- Matt Hughes 73pts (Most wins with 15, KO/Sub/TKO 11, Title Defenses 7)

So, on this scoring system, Matt Hughes is the runaway winner for the UFC fighter of the decade. It’s hard to argue with those numbers, but Hughes does benefit form having the most fights. Still, 7 successful title defenses are very impressive. However we can take another factor into this equation. What about points per fight? Obviously, this will skew things in a different view, and there are probably guys who I did not bother to rank who would score well on this scale. So, for scoring, we are going to use Rampage Jackson as a bottom mark. Rampage only had 6 UFC fights, but he did defend his title. Also one cannot argue that the talent in the UFC in the second half of the decade was greater than the first half.  So, rather arbitrarily, Rampage is the low end of the fights with 6.  So, what does the points per look like?

#10- Chuck Liddell 3.000

#9- Tito Ortiz 3.059

#8- Jon Fitch 3.083

#7- Rich Franklin 3.125

#6- BJ Penn 3.375

#5- Matt Hughes 3.650

#4- Rampage Jackson 3.667

#3- Georges St-Pierre 3.933

#2- Lyoto Machida 4.125

#1- Anderson Silva 5.500

Well that shakes things up a little. Anderson Silva runs away with fighter of the decade with this system. Now, he did not fight in the UFC until 6/28/06, but still ranked 4th on the cumulative list. Also, he gets docked a title defense because Travis Lutter missed weight and he had two fights out of weight class. Of course, when you look at number two on this list, it seems to invalidate it. No one would put Machida #2 for the decade. GSP however, takes three on this list, and two on the above list. He has 15 UFC fights, so we are also dealing with a large sample size.

With these scoring systems, it really does come down to three guys, Hughes, GSP and Silva. Again, with everything cumulative Hughes runs away with it. On the per fight, Silva runs away with it. When you look at both, GSP remains strongest.

So with those three in mind, I will now apply some subjective thought to determine my pick. That pick is GSP. Silva was the most dominating, but only had 10 fights. Hughes was the most successful, but most of that success came in the first half of the decade, and the UFCs’ talent pool has increased over that time. Also, he is 1-2 versus GSP. GSP is my pick. He avenged both of his losses, and seems to get better with every fight. Had Silva fought a couple more times, he would have been the pick, but GSP had 5 more fights (50% more). Now, watch him get KO’d by Dan Hardy.

Other interesting things from this exercise; Josh Koscheck has the most points out of the UF Season 1 alums with 38 points (and no title fights). Forrest Griffin only logged in 21 points.  Florian had the highest per fight with 2.846.  Randy Couture fought 17 times, 14 of those were title defenses. Probably one of the bigger, “what ifs” is what if he did not leave the UFC after the Gonzaga fight.  He probably could have had at least two more fights. Also, Lesnar would not have gotten the title shot as quickly. Liddell also could have been a little higher had he not fought in Pride 2003 Middleweight Grand Prix.  The same can be said for BJ, who left the UFC after beating Hughes and was gone for two years.

Well that was fun. If I have forgotten anyone of note, let me know and I can easily add them and see how they rank.

feel free to email me at deb101976@yahoo.com if you want to see spreadsheet.