Mark Muñoz ranked top 5 in UFC Middleweight

Source : Mikkel Bolante Interaksyon Sports

Mark Muñoz

The USA Today/SB Nation Consensus MMA Rankings for July 2011 were posted recently, and there’s good news for Pinoy fight fans. UFC middleweight Mark Muñoz found himself inside the Top 5 of his weight class just behind UFC champion Anderson Silva, top contenders Yushin Okami and Chael Sonnen and Strikeforce champion Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza.

Muñoz is currently on a three-fight winning streak in the UFC, including a unanimous decision win over Brazilian jiu-jitsu specialist Demian Maia at UFC 131 last month.

Muñoz, alongside veteran Chris Leben, was also earlier announced to be the headliner of the historic first-ever five-round non-title fight in UFC history.

Only championship fights are scheduled for five rounds, with non-title affairs normally scheduled for just three. Fans feel many non-title bouts, though, deserve to go the full distance, with three rounds not enough to determine a clear winner as in several controversial decisions in recent cards. That has prompted the UFC to declare all future main event fights to be five-rounders, beginning with the Muñoz-Leben fight at UFC 138.

Should Muñoz get past “The Ultimate Fighter” Season 1 alum Leben, he could be one win away from fighting for the title at 185 pounds.

That should open a whole different dilemma, though, as middleweight champ Silva is a good friend and frequent training partner of Muñoz.

For now, though, it’s nice to see Muñoz, who proudly goes by the nickname “the Filipino Wrecking Machine,” climb the MMA rankings. As he says in multiple interviews about fighting Silva, “that’s a bridge we’ll cross when we get there.”

The USAT/SBN Consensus Rankings is a compiled ranking of the top twenty MMA websites, spanning all MMA promotions.