Jan Blachowicz with the UFC light heavyweight belt. (imago Images)
UFC pound for pound rankings has a new entrant after Israel Adesanya vs Jan Blachowicz title fight
The UFC pound for pound rankings received a timely update after UFC 259. The PPV saw three title fights go down which warranted for the rankings to get a facelift.
Jan Blachowicz defended his light heavyweight title against middleweight champion Israel Adesanya. Aljamain Sterling won the bantamweight title against Petr Yan via disqualification.
And Amanda Nunes expectedly defended her featherweight belt against Megan Anderson. The biggest winner from the event in the rankings was undoubtedly Blachowicz.
The Pole entered the top-10 rankings in style and went straight to 8th, making a leap of 6 places. He sits one place below Dustin Poirier, whose UFC 257 win over Conor McGregor wasn’t enough to hand him a rankings boost.
Dropping out of the 10 to make way for Blachowicz is Petr Yan after his title loss to Sterling via disqualification.
The top 2 ranked men’s pound-for-pound fighters remain unchanged. Lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov is at the pinnacle despite retiring from the sport last year.
Light heavyweight legend Jon Jones remains at #2 as he takes the step up to heavyweight. Meanwhile, Kamaru Usman moved to #3.
The other big change comes in #4 and #5. Heavyweight champion Miocic moves up one place to fourth, while featherweight champion Alexander Volaknovski is bumped up to 5th.
Israel Adesanya drops 3 places to 7th in what is the biggest fall in the top 10. His #3 ranking is, of course, now with Usman.
Featherweight champion Deiveson Figueiredo and Max Holloway both drop 1 place each to round off the list. Poirier, Jones, and Holloway are the only ones on the list without a belt around their waist.
‘Bones’, however, vacated the light heavyweight belt in order to move up from 205 to 265.
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