Ilia Topuria's KO heard round the world vaults him near the top of the KevinIole.com Sweet 16

Ilia Topuria entered the main event of UFC 298 with a perfect 14-0 record, a reputation as a solid wrestler with terrific technical boxing skills and good punching power. But he hadn't beaten anyone near the top of the food chain heading into his bout with Alexander Volkanovski in their featherweight title bout, so there were plenty of questions surrounding him.

It was obvious he had the talent, but doing it at the highest level against the best in the world isn't easy. For that reason, he wasn't ranked pound-for-pound in most MMA rankings.

But after putting Volkanovski to sleep in the second round of their bout at the Honda Center, he certainly was going to be ranked. The question was how high he would go. And the problem was confounded by the fact that Volkanovski was ranked third. When a fighter loses, especially one ranked so high like Volkanovski, how far should he/she drop in the pound-for-pound rankings? And should the person who defeated them, if not ranked, move all the way up into their spot?

There is no good answer to that question, but it was obvious that Topuria needed to be ranked very high the way he dealt with Volkanovski.

After much consideration, I put him fourth, behind only UFC heavyweight champion Jon Jones, UFC lightweight champion Islam Makhachev and UFC welterweight champion Leon Edwards. Beating a guy as good as Volkanovski as decisively as Topuria did showed that his first 14 wins were no flukes. He had to be ranked up there with the elite of the elite.

But though Volkanovski has been knocked out in his last two outings, by Makhachev and Topuria, he showed until the moment he was finished that he's still competing at that level. So I dropped him to seventh. Obviously, that's open for debate, so let me know your thoughts below.

Finally, BMF champion Justin Gaethje was 16th, and he fell out of the rankings in order to make way for Topuria. Gaethje will defend his BMF belt at UFC 300 against Max Holloway, so it's almost certain that he'll re-enter the rankings with a win there.

So with that, here are the updated KevinIole.com rankings of the world's best male MMA fighters as of Feb. 22, 2024:

Here are the female rankings, with the note that Julianna Peña is unranked because she last fought July 30, 2022