Lyoto Machida Breaks Open the P4P Rankings

Since Fedor Emelianenko and Georges St-Pierre's resounding victories in January, all the p4p rankings appeared to be crystallizing.

The consensus was this: Fedor Emelianenko, Georges St-Pierre, Anderson Silva—and then everyone else. The order varied, and occasionally you'd hear from Miguel Torres fans, or those eternally supporting the Hawaiian prodigy, BJ Penn.

And while Anderson Silva did not exactly reinforce his ranking with his win over Thales Leites, he still won decisively and therefore did little to drop himself from that upper echelon.

Naturally then, the conventional wisdom was that the top rankings would not change much until one of these top-three fighters fought once again.

Lyoto Machida has been on my pound-for-pound radar for a while now, but he has gone largely unnoticed by many other rankings. Yahoo! currently has him ranked No. 7, while Sherdog doesn't even include Lyoto Machida within the top 10.

As an unabashed Lyoto Machida fan (check out my recent Lyoto article), I feel that this is a great injustice in need of rectification.

So I've decided to re-examine the pound-for-pound rankings, fighter by fighter, in hopes of getting some further discussion and new outlook on the pound-for-pound rankings. I'll start by making the pound-for-pound case for Lyoto Machida.

The Case for Lyoto Machida

First, let's just consider the record of Lyoto Machida.

Machida now has wins over four former UFC champions in Rich Franklin, Rashad Evans, BJ Penn, and Tito Ortiz. That statistic alone puts him within an extremely elite group. 

But consider the way he did it as well: He stopped Rich Franklin's nine-fight win streak in only Machida's third outing, while besting a seasoned BJ Penn in only his sixth bout. But he also has other notable victories over Sokoudjou and Thiago Silva.

Not only does his record look like a who's who of the UFC, he's done all of this while remaining undefeated, not even losing as much as a round in UFC competition.

So he's won and dominated all of his fights over elite competition—now let's consider his skill set and ability.

What makes Lyoto so dominant is his karate striking ability that allows him to control the pace of the fight, inflicting damage while absorbing no damage himself.

He's been able to easily out-strike any of his opponents. The same footwork, range control, and movement used for his strikes also makes him very difficult to wrestle against.

In the UFC, Machida has defended 85 percent of takedowns. For reference, that is at the same level as Georges St-Pierre, considered the best wrestler in the UFC.

But not only is he able to defend takedowns, he's also been able to execute takedowns against Tito Ortiz and BJ Penn, who is famous for his takedown defense.

When the fight reaches the ground, Machida's BJJ black-belt skills have proved to be highly effective, as he has dominated positional control throughout his UFC career.

All of these skills beg the question: Who can beat Lyoto Machida?

Lyoto may be able to out-strike any fighter in the UFC. But if there are strikers able to compete against him standing, are they well-rounded enough to avoid being exploited by the rest of Machida's arsenal?

There are better wrestlers than Machida in the UFC. But if Machida's game plan is to stay on the outside, he may be able to avoid being planted on his back.

As far as ground battles are concerned, if a wrestler like Randy Couture was able to take Machida down, he might be able to do some damage, but Machida has been able to avoid getting hurt badly in the few instances when he has been on his back and should not be considered particularly vulnerable to submissions.

For that matter, any fighter without significant submission grappling skill would be at a significant disadvantage on the ground against Machida.

So who beats Machida?

Any powerful striker might have a puncher's chance, but given Machida's excellent timing, it would not be much more than that.

The number of strikers in the world who could be reasonably effective on their feet against Machida is already a very small number. That small number shrinks drastically when considering only those that would also be able to successfully avoid the other aspects of Lyoto Machida's well-rounded game.

So far, Machida has not been out-grappled either, so it seems that the number of fighters who could wade through Machida's striking range and footwork, and then control the fight on the ground, is very small.

But besides the requisite skills required to beat Machida, it also requires a high fight IQ. It takes incredible mental toughness to not fall into the rhythm and strategy of Machida. The ability to do this while staying patient and avoiding frustration is rare.

Machida's best weapons should present problems for almost every fighter in the UFC. But beyond that, unlike some of the other p4p fighters I will investigate, Lyoto has few glaring weaknesses in what is as well-rounded a game as there is in the world of MMA.

All these things considered, it seems certain to me that Lyoto should be considered right at the top of the p4p discussion. 

My next entry will discuss the p4p case for Miguel Torres.

Here's the link http://bleacherreport.com/articles/185526-is-miguel-torres-overlooked-in-the-mma-p4p-rankings