FanHouse Hatsu Hioki

Wednesday night's Jose Aldo vs. Mike Brown fight shook up the featherweight division in mixed martial arts. When I interviewed Brown last week it looked like he was close to clearing out the featherweight division, but now that Aldo is the World Extreme Cagefighting featherweight champion, the division is a lot more interesting.

Who will get the first shot at Aldo's title? I think it'll be the winner of the WEC 46 bout between Urijah Faber and Rafael Assuncao, and I think Manny Gamburyan's win over Leonard Garcia on Wednesday night makes him a player in the featherweight division, too.

My featherweight rankings are below.

In a big upset and a bad decision, Michihiro Omigawa defeated Hatsu Hioki by split decision Saturday at Sengoku 11 in Tokyo.

Hioki clearly controlled the pace of the fight, especially in the first and second round. Omigawa wouldn't quit and had his best round in the third, but it's very surprising that two of the three judges awarded him the fight.

World Extreme Cagefighting is home to the best featherweights in MMA. Mike Brown is the undisputed champion of the world, he should have a great fight with Jose Aldo late this year, and Urijah Faber, the man Brown beat twice, is still probably the WEC's biggest draw.

But there's one problem with the WEC's featherweights: They're not doing enough to promote Wagnney Fabiano. You could make a case that Fabiano is more deserving of a title shot against Brown than Aldo is, and Fabiano certainly deserves to be heavily promoted as a future title contender. Instead, Fabiano's fight with Erik Koch next month isn't even on the live TV portion of the card.

On today's conference call to promote WEC 41, World Extreme Cagefighting featherweight champion Mike Brown and former champ Urijah Faber both insisted that they don't care about rankings. And for the two of them, that makes sense: They're fighting on June 7, and whoever wins is, without a doubt, the No. 1 featherweight in MMA. But rankings are still fun for fans and useful for identifying the top fighters in the rest of the featherweight division, and my own featherweight Top 10 is below.

Featherweights Hatsu Hioki and Marlon Sandro both looked impressive in winning fights early Saturday at the Sengoku 8 event in Japan, and as a result both remain in the list of the Top 10 featherweights in MMA. Hioki needed just 3:09 to submit Ronnie Mann, while Sandro needed just 19 seconds to knock out Nick Denis. The full Top 10 list is below.

Now is a great time to be a fan of small fighters. We just witnessed the best bantamweight card ever at WEC 40, and my list of the Top 10 featherweights in MMA features a whole lot of guys who either won over the weekend or are about to get big tests.

The featherweight division in MMA right now consists of Mike Brown, Urijah Faber and everyone else.

Who's the third best featherweight in MMA? I don't know. I just know that after Brown destroyed Leonard Garcia on Sunday night to retain his World Extreme Cagefighting championship at WEC 39, he's definitely the No. 1 featherweight in the world, and that former champion Faber will give Brown a great fight when they have their rematch this summer.

I have questions about everyone at positions 3-10, but my full list of the top 10 featherweights in MMA is below.

Above, Leonard Garcia discusses his World Extreme Cagefighting featherweight title fight against Mike Brown at WEC 39. Garcia says, "The WEC title is the title for 145-pounders," and I think he's right. Although the upcoming Dream featherweight tournament will be interesting, the two best 145-pound fights this year are likely to be Garcia vs. Brown on March 1 and the winner of that fight vs. Urijah Faber in the summer.

My full MMA featherweight rankings are below.