Sherdog’s Official Mixed Martial Arts Rankings

Just because your breakthrough win fails to break you into the top 10 does not mean you cannot have a real rankings impact.

Undefeated 24-year-old Darren Till earned the biggest win of his career at UFC Fight Night 118 on Oct. 21 in Gdansk, Poland, where he broke perennial standout Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone’s nose and stopped him in the first round. However, in the latest Sherdog.com divisional rankings, Till’s sensational win was not enough for him to nab the No. 10 spot at 170 pounds over incumbent Kamaru Usman, who has gone 6-0 inside the Octagon. Nonetheless, the 16-0-1 loose-lipped Liverpudlian lands on our contenders list, while Cerrone’s third straight loss sees him exit the top-15 stage.

UFC Fight Night 118 also saw another undefeated prospect join a respective bubble list, as 22-year-old Aspen Ladd pounded out Sweden’s Lina Lansberg in the second round, taking her spot among the women’s 135-pound contenders. Ladd is not the foremost blue chipper on the rise in this rankings update, however. That honor belongs to Konfrontacja Sztuk Walki flyweight champion Ariane Lipski.

The 23-year-old Lipski captured the inaugural KSW women’s 125-pound crown by submitting Romania’s Diana Belbita in front of nearly 58,000 fans in May, and at KSW 40 in Ireland, she defended it for the first time with a quick-and-dirty rear-naked choke win over fellow Brazilian Mariana Morais. “The Violence Queen’s” eighth straight win moves her from seventh to fifth in our flyweight rankings, vaulting the undefeated Ilima-Lei Macfarlane and Pancrase poster girl Rin Nakai.

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