Where the Lightweight division stood when 2021 finished, taken from the 41 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 2021, dated 20 December 2021. The right-hand column is the change since 21 December 2020 — the table this page measures the year from.
| Rank | Fighter | On the year |
|---|---|---|
| ChampionC | Charles Oliveira | ↑3 |
| 1 | Justin Gaethje | — |
| 2 | Dustin Poirier | — |
| 3 | Beneil Dariush | ↑9 |
| 4 | Islam Makhachev | ↑9 |
| 5 | Michael Chandler | NEW |
| 6 | Rafael Dos Anjos | ↑1 |
| 7 | Tony Ferguson | ↓2 |
| 8 | Dan Hooker | ↓2 |
| 9 | Conor McGregor | ↓5 |
| 10 | Gregor Gillespie | ↑4 |
| 11 | Rafael Fiziev | NEW |
| 12 | Mateusz Gamrot | NEW |
| 13 | Arman Tsarukyan | NEW |
| 14 | Brad Riddell | NEW |
| 15 | Diego Ferreira | ↓6 |
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 2020 on the record (21 December 2020) and the last table of 2021 (20 December 2021).
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