Dana White’s Contender Series: Season 8 Signee Rankings
By James Herrick,
14 hours ago
Dana White’s Contender Series Season 8 brought 42 new fighters into the promotion. Here is a ranking of which fighters have serious skills. (David Yeazell-USA TODAY Sports)
Dana White’s Contender Series: Season 8 Signee Rankings
Dana White’s Contender Series: Season 8 produced 42 new UFC fights. The signees represent a vast range of potential outcomes. On one hand, there are blue-chip prospects that can reach the rankings while others will go winless and get cut. The goal today is to look at every signee from this season and determine which end of the scale they fall on.
Tiers Explanation
This post will rank every signee from one to 42. On top of that, we will use tiers to help provide some context to those rankings. Here are the seven tiers that will be used to help rank these fighters.
Elite Prospects: The top tier is reserved for elite prospects. This group of fighters is filled with fighters who have already shown highly impressive skills for their age. These fighters can win fights in the UFC and are the most likely to climb the rankings. This group only includes fighters that immediately become one of the best prospects in their division.
Near-Elite/Elite Upside: The second tier is the near-elite and high upside tier. This group of fighters can include two different types of fights. The near-elite tier fighter is someone who has shown a serious level of skill for their age. Although, those fighters were not quite as impressive as fighters included in the top tier.
Elite upside fighters represent fighters with a lot of room to grow. These fighters have improvements to make; however, a few improvements would make them sensational prospects. This is the type of fighter that can boom or bust. That said, this tier is reserved for fighters who are more likely to hit the boom outcome.
Quality Fighters/High-Upside Projects: The next tier is reserved for quality fighters and high-upside prospects. This tier is very similar to the previous tier. It is just a slight level down. The fighters that make up the quality fighter portion of the rankings are athletes who should have the ability to get UFC wins. This makes them clearly better than lower-end tier, but also undeserving of elite prospect status.
The second part of this ranking includes fighters with a ridiculous amount of upside. This is fighters with specific elite skills or traits, but they are less likely to reach their top status in comparison to the fighters tiered above them. It will take a lot of work. That’s why they are projects. That said, a few will hit and fly up prospect rankings.
This seems like polar opposite types of fighters to have tier together; however, there is a reasoning behind it. A decent amount of these high-upside fighters can lean on their clear elite skill to get wins. In a way, this gives them the potential to pick up a few wins. That makes them better than the lower-ranked fighters and puts them toward the middle of the rankings.
Reason for Interest: The next tier of fighter is the reason for interest tier. This is the middle ground and average tier. The fighters in this tier do not hold elite skills like the aforementioned fighters. At the same time, they are less likely to pick up wins than the quality fighters. Overall, these are fighters who can get UFC wins, but they are less likely to win and eventually become ranked. This is the fighter that you will see on the prelims with a middling record, but you don’t expect them to beat high-quality opponents. This is the most common type of fighter to get signed.
Fun With Little UFC Impact: This tier is reserved for fighters who will be fun to watch, but will not be great fighters. This is the type of fighter that goes 2-2 and gets kept around because they had four fun fights. Obviously, matchmaking could make their record a little better or worse, but the point stands.
Who Cares?: This tier is fighters that will probably not win at the UFC level. At the end of their tenure, not many fans with recognize their name. These fighters do not have elite skills and they do not have anything that provides optimism that they can grow into a quality prospect. Unfortunately, these are fighters that you will see on the prelims and have zero interest in watching.
Really Bad: The final prospect tier includes fighters that are flat-out bad. It would be a shock to see these fighters win UFC fights. If they do, it will be a result of luck or matchmaking that books them against another awful fighter. That is how most of these fighters won on DWCS to earn a contract.
The Rankings
It has to be emphasized that these rankings are a reflection of each fighter’s UFC potential. A fighter can be trash and knock out another bun on DWCS. These rankings reflect UFC potential.
Here are the final rankings for DWCS Season 8 signees. If you want more information on a specific fighter, you can click on the link with their name which will direct you to the recap of their DWCS fight. This will provide a recap of their fight and a deep dive into their skills.
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