UFC women’s featherweight contender Megan Anderson voted fellow countryman Alexander Volkanovski for the number 1 pound-for-pound. But, her argument might need some revision.
UFC featherweight champion Alexander “The Great” Volkanovski competed at UFC 284 in Perth, Australia last weekend. He moved up to lightweight to challenge Islam Makhachev for the lightweight belt. Makhachev successfully defended his belt with judges scoring 48-47, 48-47 and 49-46 for Makhachev.
With that result, Makhachev marked his first successful title defense. Meanwhile, Volkanovski suffered his second ever loss in decades long MMA career. The Australian was on a 22 win streak since 2013. This is also his first UFC loss.
After the bout ended, many fans debated whether Volkanovski had to be stripped off of his number 1 pound-for-pound status as well. Many fans believe that Volkanovski should still be the number 1, given how well he handled number 2 pfp Makhachev despite losing in score.
UFC rankings are famously coy – with the panel consisting of defunct outlets who never covered MMA, and those that don’t even exist any more. And amidst all that confusion a lot of UFC fans conflated ESPN rankings with those of the UFC.
“I kept Volkanovski as No.1 because, while the fight was super close, I thought he edged the decision, three rounds to two. I also feel that Volk took more risks in taking that fight than Islam did, by going up a weight class. Even though the judges didn’t score it in his favor, Volk cemented himself as the No.1 guy.” Anderson said.
Suffice to say, UFC fans were outraged online and even went so far as to slam Women’s MMA in return digging up screen grabs of an older tweet from Islam Makhachev.
“Megan is apart of the panel for ESPN MMA’s P4P ranking, which is completely independent of the official UFC rankings and doesn’t really mean anything It’s not very surprising to see people in this community act so purposefully obtuse in order to place all their blame on a woman” – One fan pushed back.