00:00UFC 307 saw Alex Pereira retain the UFC's Light Heavyweight Championship, battling sickness,
00:13illness, fatigue, injury, and Khalil Roundtree to pick up a 4th round knockout of Roundtree.
00:21Where does Pereira sit on the pound-for-pound rankings?
00:24Here we go.
00:26Coming in at number 10, it is Alex Volkanovsky.
00:28Yes, he has lost his title, but he was a pound-for-pound number 2 for a while, and the only guys he
00:34loses to are guys who are on this list.
00:37So I cannot still knock this dude off of this list right now.
00:42He comes in at number 10.
00:45At 9, it is Leon Edwards.
00:47Again, you get a couple wins over a guy who is in the top 3, you're gonna stay on the
00:51list.
00:52Even with a loss, and even with a frustrating loss, I can't put him all the way off of
00:56it yet.
00:57So he is at 9.
00:58At 8, Merab Davalishvili.
01:00A win over Sean O'Malley, and a championship gets you on the list.
01:04But given, again, the quality of the opposition that we are dealing with ahead of him, I just,
01:09there was no one...
01:108 does feel a little bit low.
01:13Maybe if it was a bit more...
01:14I mean, it was a dominant win over Sean O'Malley.
01:16But I do think if it was a bit more of a ba-boom win, you know?
01:21Then maybe he moves up, but I just, I couldn't put him ahead of the rest.
01:24At 7, it's Bilal Mohamed.
01:25It's been quite the run up to a championship point, and then a win over Leon Edwards, who
01:29again, has a resume that keeps him on this list even after a loss.
01:33I think you have to reward that, so he gets at 7.
01:35At 6, it's Jon Jones.
01:37Dana White would say that any pound-for-pound list that includes Jon Jones doesn't have
01:40a number 1 is stupid.
01:41So I guess this list is stupid.
01:43But inactivity for Jon Jones, you have to keep him on here because he's the heavyweight
01:47champion of the world, but it hasn't... hasn't happened in a while.
01:52And it's only happened once in a really long time.
01:55So, you can't put him any higher, I don't think, than 6 on this list.
01:58At 5, it is Tom Aspinall.
02:00A phenomenal run of knockouts has him in the top 5, and now potentially setting up a fantastic
02:08clash with him and Alex Pereira, as the two kind of teased that on social media.
02:13At 4, Ilya Taporia, uh, you know, Volkanovsky.
02:17The only guy who he loses to, or the only guy he's lost to is Islam Makachev, who we
02:21haven't talked about yet, and will.
02:23So that tells you how high this cat is on the pound-for-pound rankings.
02:27So Taporia, I think, puts himself in some rarefied air with a win over Volkanovsky and
02:34now has an opportunity to move even higher as he gets ready for Max Holloway.
02:39At 3, it is Drikus Du Plessis.
02:41A win over Israel Adesanya helps.
02:44Beating Sean Strickland, who beat him, also helps.
02:46And it has... look, it hasn't been overly convincing all the time.
02:51And there are very few things that he does that you would teach that way in any martial
02:56arts school ever.
02:57But the wins continue to pile up, and he continues to show the type of fighter that he is.
03:03So he comes in in the top 3.
03:05At 2, it's a win but I can't move him.
03:08Alex Pereira stays in the number 2 spot.
03:10A victory over Khalil Rowntree does not put you to number 1.
03:15Now, if the Instagram thing plays out and we get a fight with him and Aspinall next,
03:23I think the winner of that probably moves to number 1.
03:27You either have Pereira, who would now have wins over champions in 3 different weight
03:32classes, which I feel pretty confident in saying that's never happened before, so that
03:37would be unbelievable.
03:39Or you have Aspinall, who has knocked off a guy who is 2 in the rankings and has been
03:43dominant along the way.
03:44So that fight would be for the number 1 spot in the men's pound-for-pound rankings, a ranking
03:49currently held by Islam Makhachev.
03:52When you have 2 fights of the top 2 fighters in the pound-for-pound rankings and you win
03:56both of them, you hold onto the crown for a really long time.
04:00And that is what Islam Makhachev is doing, as he is the number 1 fighter in our UFC men's
04:06pound-for-pound rankings.
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