Where the Lightweight 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 Lightweight rankings are one click away.
The last Lightweight 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.
| Rank | Fighter | On the year |
|---|---|---|
| ChampionC | Conor McGregor | NEW |
| 1 | Khabib Nurmagomedov | ↑1 |
| 2 | Tony Ferguson | ↑3 |
| 3 | Eddie Alvarez | ↑1 |
| 4 | Rafael Dos Anjos | ↓4 |
| 5 | Edson Barboza | ↑2 |
| 6 | Nate Diaz | ↑2 |
| 7 | Michael Johnson | ↓1 |
| 8 | Michael Chiesa | ↑6 |
| 9 | Beneil Dariush | — |
| 10 | Dustin Poirier | ↑2 |
| 11 | Donald Cerrone | ↓8 |
| 12 | Gilbert Melendez | NEW |
| 13 | Francisco Trinaldo | NEW |
| 14 | Evan Dunham | NEW |
| 15 | Al Iaquinta | ↓5 |
A ranking here is a ranking the UFC published on that date, not our order and not a re-run of it.
Measured between the last table of 2015 on the record (21 December 2015) and the last table of 2016 (19 December 2016).
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.
A year gets a page here only where the UFC published at least 10 Lightweight 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.
← Lightweight rankings today