Georges St. Pierre
Pic by SHERDOG.COM -click for source- Credit: Dave Mandel

Out of all the UFC’s newly minted rankings in a recent partnership with fightmetric.com, the only true blunder is located at the very top of their pound-for-pound (P4P) list. Anderson Silva is first, Jon Jones is second, and GSP sits at third.

Georges ‘Rush’ St. Pierre is not an exciting fighter these days. Yet he’s ardently marched through 24 fighters over the course of his career in the last decade, only dropping two fights which he administered his own brand of revenge on by brutally taking out Matt Hughes by submission and Matt Serra by TKO.

Ironically, he avenged his losses in the same manner they were delivered. Where Hughes submitted him by armbar, and Serra won by TKO, GSP simply returned the favor.

GSP’s current 11 fight win streak encompasses all the best fighters among the welterweights since 2007. Recent challengers of note include Carlos ConditNick DiazB.J. Penn(2x), and Josh Koschek(2x).

Modern day PPV buyers of GSP’s tune in out of shear nostalgia, or to see him lose for the first time in years. Either way, he’s the number two fighter in the world, not Johny ‘Bones’ Jones.

With all this in mind, why is Jones officially ranked ahead of him?

The truth is people are tired of watching GSP use his wrestling to secure decision wins every single time he fights and Jone’s is a true finisher. But for those who weren’t a fan of the sport back in the day (including myself) GSP was a true finisher during his prime as well.

Therefore, it’s strongly within reason to assume GSP has passed more tests than Jones, of whom has only been winning for almost exactly half the time of the welterweight champ, and regardless of GSP’s lack of killer instinct these days, Jones will need to put a few more years of dominant performances under his belt (pun cheaply intended) before the discussion should even begin on where he stacks up against the French Canadian super star.

But where unfair criticism sticks to the truly gifted young athletes of our generation these days (Lebron James, Tim Tebow) trying to simply compete, Jones has fallen victim to strong criticism from the peanut gallery for his recent lack of quality opponents, regardless of the way he has been able to put them away, or how quickly he has done so in the past few years.

He makes some of the greatest fighters in the sport look like children in the cage, and so much so, that even the popular argument of Jones being just too big for competition at light heavyweight, illustrates how skewed the general population’s perception of the young champion really is.

He’s not too big, his opponents are just that far outclassed that the only way a normal person’s brain can contemplate the disparaging gap in talent between the champ and everyone else, must be for reasons outside the realm of human control.

If his size is a determinant of anything, it’s that the UFC should stop pitting the man against middleweights. Frankly, Jones has a point when he says he’s sick of people claiming his size is the only mitigating factor in the cage since he’s already fought all the best in the light heavyweight division and won convincingly each time.

Yet his biggest critics are going to be hard to silence now that he’s on a two fight win streak against a couple of beefed up middleweights (Vitor Belfort at UFC 152 in 2012, Chael Sonnen at UFC 159 last Saturday).

So with his unbeaten record, and yes I’m ignoring Steve Mazzaggati’s blunder in the Matt Hamill fight, Jones sits at 18-1. As the youngest champion in UFC history, he’s got a good head start at jumping past GSP, and even Anderson Silva in the P4P rankings.

Here’s what it all comes down to, the UFC may be heading in the right direction by leap frogging Jones over GSP. But that time isn’t now since Jones is chronologically a generation behind Anderson Silva and GSP.

Until one of them loses, or enough time passes to compare the impact of these three fighter’s across multiple generations, Johny ‘Bones’ comes in at a solid third place, no matter how much more we all enjoy watching him fight than GSP.

Let’s leave it at that and revisit this in a few years time.