How UFC Rankings Work: The Media Panel, Meta Rankings and Title Shots

The UFC's own description on its rankings page is short: "Rankings were generated by a voting panel made up of media members. The media members were asked to vote for who they feel are the top fighters in the UFC by weight-class and pound-for-pound. A fighter is only eligible to be voted on if they are in active status in the UFC."

The panel is chosen by the UFC, not by the outlets, and the list of participating sites is posted on UFC.com. The size moves around. After UFC 205 in November 2016, the promotion noted that five of 19 voters had Conor McGregor at number one pound-for-pound. Each voter submits a top 15 per division, the votes are tallied and the consensus becomes the official list.

The UFC used to publish how each outlet voted. By 2020 it had stopped, which is where a lot of the credibility problems started.

Each division lists 15 fighters under the champion, who is marked "C" and is not voted on within his own weight class. An interim champion is marked "IC" and sits in the top spot alongside him. Champions can still be voted on for the pound-for-pound list. A fighter can appear in more than one division if he has been active in both, and only fighters on active UFC status are eligible.

After the interim lightweight title fight at UFC 324 on January 24, 2026, for example, UFC.com listed Ilia Topuria as champion, Justin Gaethje as interim champion, then Arman Tsarukyan, Charles Oliveira, Max Holloway and Paddy Pimblett at two through five.

Under the dual system now in place, the media panel rankings update on the Tuesday after an event. They are a snapshot of opinion, not a contender ladder.

On June 22, 2026 the UFC and Meta announced a second set of rankings built entirely from fight data. The UFC says the model combines statistical modeling and machine learning with UFC domain expertise and weighs outcome probability, method of victory, a fighter's trajectory and weight-class factors. Beating a higher-ranked opponent counts more, a dominant finish of a top-five contender counts more than a close decision over an unranked fighter, recent fights carry more weight and long layoffs bring inactivity penalties. It updates by the Monday after each event.

White's line on it: "I've been unhappy with the rankings and always believed there had to be a better way." He also said both systems would run side by side, that "neither will be perfect" but the new approach "will get us closer."

The first Meta update on June 23, 2026 showed how differently a model sees the sport. Jan Blachowicz dropped from fourth to 15th at light heavyweight, Derrick Lewis, Rafael Fiziev, Yair Rodriguez and Payton Talbott fell out of the top 15 entirely, Alex Pereira entered the heavyweight list at fourth and Carlos Prates jumped to number one at welterweight. Blachowicz complained publicly.

The media panel has been a punching bag for years, and some of the shots landed. In November 2020, Bloody Elbow went through the 22 outlets the UFC listed as contributors and found roughly half were questionable, including three whose domains were for sale and one, My MMA News, that had already withdrawn from the panel but was still listed. The UFC did not respond.

That June, panel voters received a "Rankings Brief" from a third-party company suggesting Shane Burgos could be dropped after a loss to Josh Emmett. Its author, Kirik Jenness, said voters "are of course free to ignore the briefs," and voters who spoke anonymously called them optional and functionally useless, but the appearance of someone steering votes did not help.

Then there is White himself. In October 2024, after number eight Khalil Rountree Jr. lost a title shot to Alex Pereira at UFC 307 and stayed at number eight, White called the panel "morons," said "I can't handle incompetence" and declared "The media will no longer control the rankings in the UFC," while adding in the same breath that "there should never be a scenario where we are personally controlling the rankings." At the UFC 323 press conference in December 2025, asked whether number one Arman Tsarukyan would get a title shot after pulling out of UFC 311 the day before the fight, White said, "I don't give a shit what the number next to your name says," and, "You don't get to just skip the line because you're ranked number one on some list."

The matchmakers. Joe Silva's departure was announced in September 2016, and the UFC hired Mick Maynard, the former Legacy FC president, as vice president of talent relations while promoting Sean Shelby to senior vice president. Together with White they build every card, and the rankings are one input among several: who sells, who is healthy, who is available on the date the promotion needs and who has been calling the champion out.

Sean Strickland is the clean example. He was ranked fifth at middleweight in August 2023 when the UFC announced him as Israel Adesanya's challenger for UFC 293 because number one Dricus du Plessis needed more time to recover from injury. On September 10, 2023 in Sydney, Strickland won a unanimous decision, 49-46 on all three cards, as a sizable underdog and took the belt.

Belal Muhammad gave the most candid account of how it works when he explained why Jack Della Maddalena got the UFC 315 title shot over Joaquin Buckley: "it just came down to who had the most wins at 170lb and that was Jack," and "it's going to be whatever they choose." Della Maddalena then beat Muhammad by unanimous decision on May 10, 2025 in Montreal.

Conor McGregor set the template. At UFC 205 on November 12, 2016 at Madison Square Garden, he knocked out Eddie Alvarez for the lightweight title in his first UFC fight at 155 pounds while still featherweight champion, becoming the first fighter to hold two UFC belts at once. No lightweight ranking earned him that fight. His drawing power did.

Ilia Topuria did a version of it in 2025. After knocking out Max Holloway at UFC 308 he vacated the featherweight title, and when Islam Makhachev vacated the lightweight belt to move up to welterweight, Topuria walked straight into a vacant-title fight with Charles Oliveira at UFC 317 on June 29, 2025 without a single lightweight bout. He knocked Oliveira out in the first round.

Paddy Pimblett is the current case. Ranked sixth at lightweight in November 2025 and 7-0 in the UFC, he campaigned openly for Topuria and was booked into the interim title fight against Gaethje at UFC 324, which he lost on the scorecards. By August 2026 he was ranked fifth, and Topuria vs Pimblett was reported as the target for UFC 334 in December 2026 in Las Vegas, built on a public feud rather than a contender ladder.

An interim champion sits at the top of the division alongside the champion and is not voted on within the weight class. The belt itself is a scheduling tool. The UFC creates one when a champion cannot fight on its timeline, and it can take it away just as quickly.

Colby Covington beat Rafael dos Anjos for the interim welterweight title at UFC 225 in June 2018 because Tyron Woodley could not fight that summer. A month later the UFC moved to strip him when he could not make UFC 228 on September 8, 2018, and booked Woodley against Darren Till instead.

Tom Aspinall won the interim heavyweight title in November 2023 against Sergei Pavlovich after Jon Jones withdrew from his fight with Stipe Miocic, then defended it against Curtis Blaydes while Jones beat Miocic in November 2024 after a 20-month layoff. The unification never happened. On June 21, 2025 at a press conference in Baku, White announced that "Jon Jones called us last night and retired" and that "Tom Aspinall is the heavyweight champion of the UFC," adding, "I obviously feel bad for Tom that he lost all that time and money."

The lightweight version played out faster. Gaethje beat Pimblett for the interim belt at UFC 324 on January 24, 2026 while Topuria was sidelined, then stopped Topuria by fourth-round corner stoppage at UFC Freedom 250 on June 14, 2026 on the White House south lawn to unify the titles and hand Topuria his first loss.