The Goal: to recognize the very best MMA athletes in each weight division, without regard to promotional affiliation.
WAMMA Rankings are released on the 15th of each month (with slight variability depending on fight schedules) and compiled by the WAMMA Rankings Committee. The committee is chaired by Sam Caplan, and includes 19 additional members. Selected biographies for some of the members are shown below.
Released July 21, 2008
WAMMA Undisputed Heavyweight Champion: Fedor Emelianenko |
|
1 |
Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira |
2 |
Randy Couture |
3 |
Josh Barnett |
4 |
Andrei Arlovski  |
5 |
Fabricio Werdum |
6 |
Tim Sylvia  |
7 |
Gabriel Gonzaga |
8 |
Ben Rothwell |
9 |
Mirko Filipovic |
10 |
Frank Mir |
| Also Receiving Votes | Heath Herring Cheick Kongo Alistair Overeem Roy Nelson Aleksander Emelianenko Cain Velasquez |
1 |
Forrest Griffin |
2 |
Quinton Jackson |
3 |
Chuck Liddell |
4 |
Lyoto Machida |
5 |
Wanderlei Silva |
6 |
Mauricio Rua |
7 |
Thiago Silva |
8 |
Keith Jardine |
9 |
Dan Henderson |
10 |
Rashad Evans |
| Also Receiving Votes | Rameau Thierry Sokoudjou Antonio Rogerio Nogueira Vladimir Matyushenko Renato Sobral |
1 |
Anderson Silva |
2 |
Rich Franklin |
3 |
Paulo Filho |
4 |
Robbie Lawler |
5 |
Dan Henderson |
6 |
Yushin Okami |
7 |
Matt Lindland |
8 |
Kazuo Misaki |
9 |
Nathan Marquardt |
10 |
Michael Bisping |
| Also Receiving Votes | Thales Leites Patrick Cote Frank Trigg Yoshihiro Akiyama Gegard Mousasi Cung Le Jason Miller Denis Kang Martin Kampmann Jorge Santiago Ronaldo Souza |
1 |
Georges St. Pierre |
2 |
Jon Fitch |
3 |
Jake Shields |
4 |
Thiago Alves |
5 |
Josh Koscheck |
6 |
Matt Hughes |
7 |
Carlos Condit |
8 |
Matt Serra |
9 |
Karo Parisyan |
10 |
Nick Thompson |
| Also Receiving Votes | Jay Hieron Mike Swick Marcus Davis |
1 |
B.J. Penn |
2 |
Takanori Gomi |
3 |
Shinya Aoki |
4 |
Gesias Calvancante |
5 |
Sean Sherk |
6 (Tie) |
Eddie Alvarez |
6 (Tie) |
Tatsuya Kawajiri |
8 |
Joachim Hansen |
9 |
Gilbert Melendez |
10 |
Josh Thomson |
| Also Receiving Votes | Kenny Florian Mitsuhiro Ishida Joe Stevenson Roger Huerta Hayato Sakurai Vitor Ribiero Caol Uno Mac Danzig |
1 |
Urijah Faber |
2 |
Norifumi Yamamoto |
3 |
Masakazu Imanari |
4 |
Akitoshi Tamura |
5 (Tie) |
Jens Pulver |
6 (Tie) |
Mike Brown |
7 |
Takeshi Inoue |
8 |
Jeff Curran |
9 |
Hatsu Hioki |
10 |
Wagnney Fabiano |
Also Receiving Votes |
Dokojonsuke Mishima Antonio Carvalho Hideki Kadowaki Rafael Assuncao Leonard Garcia Yoshiro Maeda Hiroyuki Takaya Micah Miller |
The WAMMA Ranking Committee is comprised of the most knowledgeable MMA sports/media experts ever assembled. WAMMA has assembled a "Who's Who" of MMA sports/media experts from around the globe.
Ranking Committe Chair
Sam Caplan is a veteran sportswriter who has covered the NFL, NBA, and Major League Baseball in the past. His work has been featured on sites such as CBS Sportsline, SI.com, and AOL.com.Caplan currently covers mixed martial arts on a full-time basis as the publisher of FiveOuncesOfPain.com as a contributing writer for CBSSports.com.He has made radio and television appearances on such shows as HDNet's "Inside MMA," "The Scott Ferrall Show" and "The Bubba the Love Sponge Show" on Sirius Satellite Radio, Fight Network Radio with Mauro Ranallo, and "The Mr. Sunshine Show" with host Steve Cofield on Fox Sports 1460 in Las Vegas.Caplan has also trained in several different forms of martial arts, most recently MMA.
Member
Oliver Copp is a 12-year veteran of pro wrestling and MMA broadcasting and is based in Munich, Germany.
Copp started in television in the mid-90s as a pro wrestling commentator and hotline host for companies such as World Championship Wrestling, Extreme Championship Wrestling and AAA.
A full-time television executive with European media giant ProSiebenSat1 Group by trade, he has been the German voice of the Ultimate Fighting Championship since UFC 39.
Besides doing commentary for the UFC, Copp currently covers mixed martial arts for German magazines "Ringside" and "Power Wrestling" and is acting editor-in-chief of the German edition of "WWE Magazine".
Member
Todd Martin has followed mixed martial arts since the inception of the sport, and covered the sport for over five years. His work has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, Wrestling Observer, SI.com and CBS Sportsline. Todd lives in Los Angeles and has a degree from UCLA School of Law.
Member At Large
Alex Marvez is a senior NFL/MMA writer for FOXSports.com. He has written about MMA since the sport began to plant roots in Japan during the late 1980s/early 1990s. He is the president of the Pro Football Writers of America and writes a syndicated pro wrestling column for the Scripps-Howard News Service.
Member At Large
Mauro Ranallo is a Canadian sports announcer, with experience in football, hockey, professional wrestling, and mixed martial arts events. He is best known for his work as a play-by-play announcer for PRIDE FC and, more recently, Showtime for Elite XC broadcasts. He began announcing when he was 16 years old. Since September 2006, he has been the lead news anchor and play-by-play announcer for the Canadian combat sports channel The Fight Network.
Later, he provided play-by-play announcing duties for Muay Thai/Kickboxing events and King of the Cage mixed martial arts shows on Canada's TSN. From 1999 to 2000, he served as the play-by-play announcer for the legendary Stampede Wrestling TV show in Calgary. His color-commentator was the late Bad News Allen.
He is most prominently known among MMA fans as the voice of PRIDE Fighting Championships PPV broadcasts in North America from 2003 until October 2006. He was also the play-by-play announcer for KVOS-TV's Top Ranked Wrestling for most of that program's run in 2005-06.
He also calls the MMA action on Hardcore Championship Fighting seen across Canada on the Score network.
Member
Benjamin Baroukh-Ebstein currently maintains his own blog in French regarding the business of MMA. He also writes articles for IKUSA.fr, Frances' number one MMA website.
Member
Dann Stupp is editor-in-chief of MMAjunkie.com, one of the web's most popular MMA news sites and a content partner of Yahoo! Sports. He is also the MMA columnist for the Dayton Daily News and is syndicated by Cox Newspapers.
After graduating from the University of Missouri School of Journalism, Stupp spent seven years working for Cincinnati Reds front office in various creative and marketing managment roles. He published two books on the Reds and is a former baseball writer for the San Francisco Chronicle.
Member
Mike Sawyer co-hosts the weekly MMA podcast "Tough Talk", www.blogtalkradio.com/toughtalk, with Oliver Copp as well as writes for www.f4wonline.com with a monthly column called "The Shooters Paradise", which covers all the latest news from Vegas.
Member
Adam Morgan is mixed martial arts enthusiast from Cincinnati, OH. He contributes on a regular basis to the mixed martial arts blog FiveOuncesofPain.com as well as 411Mania.com's MMA Zone and appears regularly on the Mo Egger Show on 1530 HOMER The Sports Animal in Cincinnati.
Member
Ben Fowlkes is an MMA columnist for Sports Illustrated and a writer for CagePotato.com. He formerly served as editor of IFL.tv, and his work has appeared on CBS Sportsline, Fox Sports, and Crave Online.
Member
Steve Sievert is the lead staff writer for MMAJunkie.com. In his 25-year career as a broadcaster and journalist, Sievert has covered college football, Major League Baseball, the NBA, cycling, and track and field. He also created and hosted Runner’s World On-Air – a nationally syndicated weekly radio program covering American distance running and the international track scene.
From 1999 to 2008, Sievert served as a sports reporter and columnist for the Houston Chronicle and launched the newspaper’s mixed martial arts coverage as lead writer and blogger. Sievert’s beat included a weekly MMA Notebook in the Chronicle’s print edition and a popular blog titled Brawl Sports.
Member
Denny Burkholder is a longtime producer and writer for CBSSports.com who is currently the producer of CBS's online NBA and boxing content, along with MMA. He has produced and written for NCAAsports.com, covering numerous March Madness tournaments, NCAA wrestling and other events and championships. Burkholder has been an MMA enthusiast since 1994 and also has experience covering pro wrestling for several print and online publications.
Member
Jose Rodriguez is the Editor-in-Chief of the Calgary Sun Newspaper as well as the mixed-martial-arts writer for Sun Media — Canada's largest newspaper chain. He also runs The Scrapyard blog on canoe.ca.
Member
Ron Kruck has covered practically every sport imaginable but currently spends most of his time reporting from the cage for HDNet Fights and the ring of the International Fight League.
In addition to conducting post fight interviews and ring reporting, the multitalented broadcaster has done play-by-play announcing for the IFL on FSN, HDNet and MyNetwork. He is also the lead reporter and news update host for the ground breaking program Inside MMA.
Since 2003, Kruck has been a studio host, reporter and producer with Mark Cuban’s high definition network HDNet. Covering both mixed martial arts and boxing, Kruck is an integral part of HDNet Fights. He also contributes to the network’s other sports, Major League Soccer, National Hockey League, NASCAR and Broadway Boxing as a studio host and feature reporter.
Covering mixed martial arts for years, Ron has been the ring reporter for several fight organizations and was the producer and host for a pre-fight show called Exposed on HDNet. From Randy Couture to Chuck Liddell, Kruck has interviewed the sports biggest stars.
In between his sports reporting, Kruck co-hosted HDNet’s original series Across America. For two years he traveled the country covering unique events and adventures of people from all walks of life.
Prior to joining HDNet, Kruck’s sports broadcasting career began as a producer and reporter for Prime Sports Network, TBS Super Station and KWHD-TV in Denver. The Inside Pitch, Sports Talk Live, The John Elway Retirement Special and the International Golf Show were just a few of the programs he worked on.
Ron Kruck has covered and conducted interviews at numerous major sporting events, including the Stanley Cup playoffs, Major League Baseball playoffs, NBA playoffs, NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, Olympic Trials and the Fiesta and Orange Bowls.
Member
Ariel Helwani is a graduate of Syracuse University's S.I. Newhouse School of Communications where he majored in Broadcast Journalism. He has several years experience in the world of television production working on programs for HBO Sports, ESPN Classic, Spike TV and VH1. He helped produce the Sports Emmy Award-nominated documentary "Perfect Upset: The 1985 Villanova vs. Georgetown NCAA Championship" for HBO Sports. A long-time fan of MMA, he began covering the sport professionally when he was hired to write and produce "The Ultimate Fighter 3 Finale" preshow for Spiketv.com. Later, he covered "The Ultimate Fighter 5" for Spiketv.com. In October 2007, Helwani launched JarryPark.com, a website dedicated to all things MMA, wrestling and boxing with a heavy emphasis on audio interviews. In April 2008, he was hired as editor-in-chief of MMARated.com, the Wasserman Media Group's first MMA web site.
Member
George Garcia (Gorgeous George) is the host of TAGG Radio, which can be heard every morning from 9-10:30 am PST. GG, along with co-host Frank Trigg interview all the world's top fighters as well as cover all the hot topics in MMA. An avid follower of NHB since 1993, to what is now known as MMA, GG has watched the sport grow as a fan, casual practitioner and now behind the scenes with the show's website, www.taggradio.com.
Member
John Pollock is the current co-host and producer of the Fight Network Radio and LAW radio programs along with on air work on The Fight Network. Pollock began working with The Fight Network in the spring of 2005 overseeing online news content and all radio initiatives. He graduated from Ryerson University in Toronto, Ontario in the spring of 2007 from the Radio and Television Arts program.
Member
Jesse Holland is Editor and Senior Writer of MMAmania.com and perhaps the most meddlesome journalist since Janice Kent.
A graduate of Temple University, Jesse spent the early part of his career toiling away in corporate jobs until he was discovered (by accident) writing editorials for a popular sports website.
Satirical but never sardonic, Jesse is now putting his passion for mixed martial arts to good use with insight and commentary that go beyond the standard nuts and bolts of MMA reporting. He is a regular guest on BetUS radio and has appeared on Fox Spots 1460, ProMMA Radio and ESPN 1100.
Member
Caleb Newby started his career in journalism at 411mania, initially as an MMA writer in the sports section before convincing the powers that be how mixed martial arts was worthy of its own dedicated section of content. Newby moved into the role of Editor in Chief of MMA at 411mania, leading the the site into a respected and known commodity in the mixed martial arts world. More recently, Newby has moved on to Nokaut.com to serve as Editor in addition to contributing at FiveOuncesOfPain.com, one of the industry's leading MMA blogs. Newby also holds a bachelor's degree History, which may surprise you to know, has little to no overlap with sports or journalism what-so-ever.