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Official UFC rankings — the 2016 archive

Light Heavyweight rankings, 2016

Where the Light Heavyweight division stood when 2016 finished, taken from the 36 ranking tables the UFC published for it that year. This is the archive, not today’s table — the current Light Heavyweight rankings are one click away.

The official UFC rankings, taken from ufc.com. 36 published tables in 2016, 4 January 2016 to 19 December 2016. These are the UFC’s own tables, week by week — we did not invent them and we do not reorder them. Names link to our fighter pages where we hold one; a ranked fighter we have no page for is printed as plain text rather than dropped.

How 2016 finished

The last Light Heavyweight table the UFC published in 2016, dated 19 December 2016. The right-hand column is the change since 21 December 2015 — the table this page measures the year from.

The UFC’s published ranking table of 19 December 2016
RankFighterOn the year
ChampionCDaniel Cormier—
1Anthony Johnson↑1
2Alexander Gustafsson↑1
3Glover Teixeira↑2
4Ryan Bader—
5Jimi Manuwa↑4
6Ovince Saint Preux—
7Mauricio Rua↑1
8Misha CirkunovNEW
9Corey Anderson↑4
10Nikita KrylovNEW
11Ilir LatifiNEW
12Rogerio Nogueira↓1
13Patrick Cummins↓1
14Gian Villante↑1
15Jan BłachowiczNEW

A ranking here is a ranking the UFC published on that date, not our order and not a re-run of it.

What changed in 2016

Measured between the last table of 2015 on the record (21 December 2015) and the last table of 2016 (19 December 2016).

The champion line

  • 21 December 2015 · the year opens with Daniel Cormier in the champion line
  • No change: the same fighter held the champion line on every table the UFC published for this division in the year.

Entering and leaving are counted across the whole published table, the champion line included, so a fighter who won the belt during the year is not double-counted as having left the numbered places. The number beside each name is where they sat on the table that names them. Movement inside the year that had reversed itself by December is not counted here — the division page’s week-by-week slider is where every table in between lives.

Light Heavyweight rankings, year by year

A year gets a page here only where the UFC published at least 10 Light Heavyweight tables in it. A year with three or four tables in it is the year a division opened or closed, and a “what changed this year” section built on three weeks in December would be titled as something it is not.

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