Real American Freestyle released its first official top-10 rankings on Monday, and the men’s crossover pound-for-pound list puts Colby Covington on top. The cruiserweight crossover champion sits ahead of lightweight crossover champ Henry Cejudo at No. 2, with Arman Tsarukyan, Khamzat Chimaev and Merab Dvalishvili filling out the top five, as MMA Junkie and MMA Fighting both reported.
The crossover division is RAF’s lane for UFC veterans, big-name MMA fighters and athletes from other combat sports to meet on a wrestling mat. The roster is stacked with UFC fighters, both active and retired, and those names have done most of the heavy lifting for a promotion that’s been around for nearly 14 months.
The full top 10: Covington, Cejudo, Tsarukyan, Chimaev, Dvalishvili, Aaron Pico, Tyron Woodley, Michael Chandler, Lance Palmer and Cayden Henschel.
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Covington’s case for No. 1 is simple. He’s 5-0 in RAF this year, and the résumé reads like a UFC pay-per-view poster from five years ago: Tsarukyan, Dillon Danis, Belal Muhammad, Chris Weidman and Luke Rockhold. He took the inaugural cruiserweight crossover title from Tsarukyan on July 18, then defended it against Muhammad on Sept. 19. Next up is Chimaev at RAF Abu Dhabi on Nov. 14.
Cejudo, the former UFC two-division champ and Olympic gold medalist, is 2-1 in RAF in 2026. He beat Urijah Faber, then split a pair of matches with Dvalishvili. The win that counts is the one that got him the belt, a 36-second pin of Dvalishvili at RAF 12 on Aug. 22. Both outlets called it an upset.
The most interesting number on the list belongs to Tsarukyan. He’s 7-1 in the promotion, which is more wins than Covington and Cejudo combined, and he still sits third because his one loss came to the guy at No. 1. RAF apparently cares about head-to-head, which is more than I can say for some of the UFC’s own rankings panels.
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The ranking will get tested quickly. RAF 14 goes down this Friday in Las Vegas, headlined by Tsarukyan vs. Danis for the inaugural middleweight crossover title. Chimaev faces former UFC welterweight champ Robbie Lawler in the co-main event. If Tsarukyan wins, he’s a two-division crossover guy with eight wins, and the gap between him and Covington starts to look thin.
My take: Covington at No. 1 is earned, and I won’t pretend otherwise. Five wins, two of them in title matches, one of them over the guy ranked third. What I don’t love is Chimaev’s calendar. He wrestles Lawler on Friday, then turns around for a title match against an unbeaten Covington roughly three weeks later in Abu Dhabi. That’s a short turnaround against the one guy in the division who hasn’t lost yet. If Chimaev gets through Lawler clean, fine. If Lawler drags him into a grind on Friday, I’d want to see what that does to Covington’s price before anybody hands Khamzat the belt on Nov. 14.
