The official UFC rankings is one of many marketing tools developed by the promotion and based on subjective votes from the “wimpy” MMA media. The weekly updates typically have little to no impact on actual matchmaking, otherwise fights like this (and potentially this) would never come to fruition.

That’s probably why everybody hates UFC rankings — even UFC CEO Dana White.

We can now add former UFC featherweight champion Max Holloway to the growing list of disgruntled fighters, since “Blessed” is still ranked at 145 pounds. The 33 year-old Hawaiian recently made the permanent transition to lightweight and has no plans to return, not unlike current rankings king Ilia Topuria.

“I don’t know what you guys are thinking keeping me No. 1 contender there, because that’s kind of ridiculous — I’m not going back down to ‘45, I’m over it,” Holloway told MMA Junkie. “The rankings, they’re all over the place. Even with Ilia. Soon as he announced he was coming up, they took him directly out of the damn ‘45 one and they left me at No. 1 contender, so I was like, what the hell is going on? At the end of the day, I don’t care. The rankings is cool, the rankings is fun, but how many times do we see where guys who rank at a certain position saying now I’m getting a title shot? It took me 12 fights to get an interim title fight at ‘45.”

Topuria was pulled from the featherweight rankings but Holloway was not.

Perhaps that will change when Holloway makes his return to the 155-pound weight class for a “BMF” battle opposite longtime rival Dustin Poirier atop the UFC 318 pay-per-view (PPV) event, locked and loaded for Sat., July 19, 2025 inside Smoothie King Center in New Orleans, Louisiana.

For much more on that upcoming fight card click here.