Sherdog Official Mixed Martial Arts Rankings

Featherweight

1. Jose Aldo (17-1)
Aldo’s first WEC title defense against Urijah Faber was supposed to test the well-rounded skills of the young Brazilian dynamo. Instead, it wound up as a test of his humanity, as he brutalized “The California Kid” with low kicks for the duration of their 25-minute bout. After his dominant performance capped the promotion’s biggest event, the trick for WEC brass will now be making challengers seem threatening to Aldo.

2. Manny Gamburyan (11-4)
After two bouts at 145 pounds -- assumed to be his more natural weight class -- Gamburyan did not set the world on fire, despite winning both. However, in his WEC 48 bout with former divisional king Mike Thomas Brown, the native Armenian had his coming-out party as a featherweight, as he clobbered the American Top Team standout in the first round and emerged as a potential challenger for Jose Aldo.

3. Mike Thomas Brown (23-6)
Brown was a healthy favorite heading into his April 24 bout with Manny Gamburyan. However, Gamburyan caught him with a thudding right hand, pounced for the finish and knocked the former champion further down the pecking order at 145 pounds.

4. Urijah Faber (23-4)
With his options at 145 pounds exhausted after his brutal April loss to Jose Aldo, the former featherweight champion will head down to 135 this summer. Faber makes his divisional debut Aug. 18 at WEC 50, where he meets former WEC bantamweight title challenger Takeya Mizugaki.

5. Bibiano Fernandes (8-2)
In the first defense of the Dream featherweight title he captured in October, Fernandes did enough to earn a split decision victory over former Dream lightweight champion Joachim Hansen. In doing so, he kept his title and notched easily the most significant win of his blossoming career.

6. Michihiro Omigawa (10-8-1)
It was not flashy -- Omigawa’s performances seldom are -- but the gritty Hidehiko Yoshida student paid due respect to his mentor on Yoshida’s retirement card, as he grinded out a unanimous decision over a tough Micah Miller. Now, the calls for Omigawa to come stateside to the WEC will only intensify.

7. Marlon Sandro (17-1)
Few men in MMA can hit like Sandro. Despite being labeled as another Nova Uniao grappler, Sandro showed his scary power once again on June 20, when he needed just 38 seconds to crush Masanori Kanehara and take the Sengoku featherweight title. It was Sandro’s third sub-40-second knockout in his last four wins.

8. Hatsu Hioki (21-4-2)
In one of the year’s most entertaining bouts, Hatsu Hioki picked up another piece of hardware -- the Shooto world title -- by besting “Lion” Takeshi Inoue on May 30 in one of the most one-sided split decisions fans will ever see.

9. Josh Grispi (14-1)
Returning from an ankle injury, “The Fluke” looked like he was in trouble for two minutes in his June 20 bout with L.C. Davis. Some 30 seconds later, Davis was out cold from a Grispi guillotine choke, and the Massachusetts native vaulted closer to a WEC title shot.

10. Diego Nunes (14-1)
After a one-sided decision loss to L.C. Davis in November, Nunes was viewed by most as just another guy in a deep WEC featherweight division. However, “The Gun” put together all his tools on June 20 and took a split decision win over Raphael Assuncao in a highly entertaining undercard affair.

Other contenders: Raphael Assuncao, L.C. Davis, Masanori Kanehara, Joe Soto Deividas Taurosevicius.

* With their respective June 20 losses to Diego Nunes and Marlon Sandro, the previously sixth-ranked Raphael Assuncao and ninth-ranked Masanori Kanehara fall outside the top 10 to the contenders list.