White: Champ Renan Barao possibly a win away from being MMA’s pound-for-pound best

DULUTH, Ga. – Move over, Jon Jones. UFC President Dana White thinks you could soon be dethroned as the world’s top-ranked pound-for-pound fighter.

Jones, the UFC’s light heavyweight champion, now sits atop most pound-for-pound rankings following recent losses by Anderson Silva and the semi-retirement of fellow notable Georges St-Pierre. However, with just one more win, White thinks bantamweight champion Renan Barao could pass Jones – and other champs such as Jose Aldo, Demetrious Johnson, Chris Weidman, Cain Velasquez and Anthony Pettis.

Up next for Barao (31-1 MMA, 6-0 UFC), a former interim titleholder who was promoted to the official champion status after the UFC stripped long-injured Dominick Cruz (19-1 MMA, 2-0 UFC), is a UFC 169 headliner with replacement Urijah Faber (30-6 MMA, 6-2 UFC). While the latter has struggled in recent title fights, White apparently still would consider it a substantial accomplishment if Barao emerges victorious.

“If Barao goes out and stops Faber, he’s probably pound-for-pound the best fighter in the world,” White told MMAjunkie following Wednesday’s UFC Fight Night 35 event.

The UFC executive knows how to promote events, and with UFC 169 taking place Feb. 1 on Super Bowl weekend in Newark, N.J., White is clearly motivated to hype the pay-per-view show. It’d be easy to dismiss the pound-for-pound claim as the usual pre-fight bluster, but Barao certainly has an impressive body of work.

With a recent TKO victory over Eddie Wineland, which marked the second successful defense of his interim belt, Barao now owns a 31-fight winning streak (with one no-contest). He was 2-0 in the WEC, he’s 6-0 in the UFC, and he’s recently defeated the likes of notables Michael McDonald, Scott Jorgensen, Brad Pickett and – in their first meeting at UFC 149 – Faber.

That’s earned Barao a No. 9 ranking in the USA TODAY Sports/MMAjunkie MMA pound-for-pound rankings (Faber is No. 15).

Helping Barao’s case heading into UFC 169 is the recent resurgence of Faber, a longtime WEC titleholder who’s winless in his past five UFC and WEC title fights. While the 2012 loss to Barao could have easily pushed Faber into irrelevancy, “The California Kid” has rebounded with four consecutive wins, all in 2013. If you couple that with a potential victory over Barao at UFC 169, White said Faber also could see a significant rise in the rankings, as well.

“If Faber wins, wow, it’d obviously mean he’ll have won a UFC champion, which is amazing, but it’ll be the biggest win of his career in every sense of the word,” White said. ” … He looks better than he’s ever looked.”

For the latest on UFC 169, stay tuned to the UFC Rumors section of the site.