{"id":668275,"date":"2026-05-13T13:32:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T13:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/668275\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T13:32:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T13:32:08","slug":"mma-rankings-may-2026-sean-stricklands-no-1-spot-not-so-cut-and-dried","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/668275\/","title":{"rendered":"MMA rankings May 2026: Sean Strickland&#8217;s No. 1 spot not so cut-and-dried"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>MMA math does not work.<\/p>\n<p>Need some proof? Take a gander at the top of the middleweight pecking order.<\/p>\n<p>With <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2026\/05\/10\/sports\/ufc-328-sean-strickland-captures-title-with-win-over-khamzat-chimaev\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">the second championship upset of his career<\/a>, Sean Strickland took back both the UFC belt he lost nearly 2 \u00bd years ago and the consensus No. 1 spot in the world.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Sean Strickland exits the octagon after his victory via split decision over Khamzat Chimaev in their middleweight title bout that headlined UFC 328 on May 9, 2026 at Prudential Center. Getty Images<\/p>\n<p>That eight months after Khamzat Chimaev thoroughly outclassed Dricus Du Plessis to become a first-time champion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MMA math does not work. Need some proof? Take a gander at the top of the middleweight pecking&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":668276,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,20207,786,4120,785,43022,85,735,787],"class_list":["post-668275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-dricus-du-plessis","tag-fighting","tag-khamzat-chimaev","tag-mma","tag-sean-strickland","tag-sports","tag-sports-plus","tag-ufc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=668275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668275\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/668276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=668275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=668275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=668275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}