“AI is here, boys and girls,” Dana White declared earlier this month, heralding Monday’s debut of the UFC’s overhauled rankings system.
In the end, the “AI” the UFC CEO spoke of sure sounds like the same sort of Elo system utilized for years by the likes of FightMatrix and Tapology than it does some sort of cutting-edge breakthrough.
(Maybe that makes it more like AI than I made it sound; plenty of hype but lighter on game-changing substance.)
Let’s get one thing out in the open: The lame-duck, media-driven rankings utilized by the UFC have been in a sorry state for nearly a decade, around the time I opted to stop participating in them during my time with another outlet. Since at least the time of the pandemic, you’d be hard-pressed to find more than a couple participants regularly covering the sport in a prominent way or on site at any major events. Routinely, head-scratching ballots would skew the results, with nary an explanation to go along with it.