The term "gatekeeper" has been around in combat sports since the early part of the 20th century. 

While the term was inspired by an actual profession and popularized by a position in media, it picked up a lot of its speed in the world of boxing. With rankings starting as early as the 1920s, the conundrum of being one of the best, but simply not good enough to topple the champion, was one that plagued many over the years. 

Gatekeeper was applied to them as a way to give a name to the way that they held back unworthy challengers from the champion. Although it is clearly a noble and, to some extent, necessary part of the sport, it was definitely not a moniker that anybody sought out. 

When MMA appeared in the early 1990s, there was no reason to have this title. The sport started with tournaments to determine champions. Even after the early tournaments, the lack of depth and actual rankings created a situation where there were no gatekeepers. However, as the sport progressed, the position began to rear its ugly head. Particularly with the likes of dominant champions like Anderson Silva, BJ Penn, and Georges St. Pierre, there were a handful of fighters just barely outside of that elite status of champion. 

As the sport has continued to grow, we’ve seen a decline in gatekeepers though. Many fighters who find themselves at danger of being deemed secondary in terms of skill simply leave the division in search of greatness elsewhere. After losing back-to-back fights to Max Holloway and then a subsequent bout to current champion Alexander Volkanovski, Jose Aldo dropped weight in search of a second life. Despite a loss in his bantamweight debut, he’s seemingly found it with another shot at being a champion. The same could be said of Jacare Souza, who was nipping at the heels of a title shot for years at middleweight. He now looks to ply his trade at light heavyweight. The list of those trying something similar is seemingly endless.

But it’s not just those leaving divisions that has endangered the gatekeeper. You could also point to those leaving promotions and contending for titles elsewhere. Ryan Bader had just about reached that status in the UFC having been beat by three former champions. He moved to Bellator and won their 205lbs title in his first bout and became heavyweight champion in his fifth - clearly avoiding the dreaded term. The same could be said of Kouji Horiguchi’s move to Rizin and, although with different levels of success, Rory MacDonald and Benson Henderson’s moves to Bellator.  

So with the gatekeeper inching closer and closer to extinction, I figure it was time to add a new term to the collective MMA lexicon that actually describes a real problem; the landmine While less and less fighters are getting stuck right around the number two spot in the rankings or so, more and more fighters, especially in stacked divisions are getting stuck right around the edge of the top fifteen. For a number of reasons, these fighters are having a tough time getting people who could advance their ranking and status to fight them. Part of the obvious reason for that is the rankings themselves. 

Who in their right mind would want to risk their spot in the rankings by fighting someone outside of them? It’s only human nature to want to fight people in front of you, but the dividing line created by being inside or outside the rankings, makes the fight against a lower ranked opponent even riskier. As a result, these fighters are basically landmines for their opponents. They are extremely dangerous while being sort of hidden under an artificial surface. 

When I noticed this as a trend, I wanted to take a look a little more at what caused this. Other than the aforementioned barrier created by the rankings, I noticed three main things that caused fighters to get stuck under the surface and become landmines:

1. An Early Career Loss

One of the things that can cause someone to become a landmine is an early career loss, particularly if it was against someone who has not become ranked themselves. This typically makes it hard to rank someone as even with time, that loss against an unranked opponent gives panelists a pause. Take Dan Ige, who just barely sneaked into the rankings with Renato Moicano moving up to lightweight. Ige lost his UFC debut to Julio Arce, who remains in the UFC, but has not made it particularly close to the rankings. Although Ige had managed to rip off five straight wins, the fact that Arce had only a slightly worse UFC record loomed large. Sure, a win over a ranked opponent would help people get over this fact, but who would want to fight Ige and risk their spot knowing that it does little for their career. 

Although his early losses, and draw, were to unranked opponents, Marvin Vettori finds himself in a similar position. His only spots on his record currently are to those ranked at numbers fourteen, twelve and the current champion. On top of that, his loss to Adesanya came by split decision - making Vettori a landmine that people are tiptoeing around. 

2. Impressive Performances Early On

Winning a fight in emphatic fashion tend to get you catapulted up the rankings and towards tougher opponents quickly, but what happens when the UFC decides to slow play the incline? The answer is usually that you rack up more than one of those really scary and dominant wins and wind up a landmine that nobody wants to step on. Geoff Neal is a perfect example of this. The ranking panel has finally done the right thing and moved him into the rankings (he currently sits at twelve in the rankings), but he’s five fights in to his UFC career and still no ranked opponents. This includes a violent win over Niko Price, who (get this) has a fight coming up against a ranked opponent next week. Seems kind of backwards, but so is the case when you have a highlight reel of UFC wins before ever seeing really high level competition. 

3. An Awkward or Unique Style 

You can call this the Ryan Hall case if you’d like. After flopping to his back and inviting Gray Maynard to meet him on the ground and then messing up BJ Penn’s leg, nobody has wanted any part of Ryan Hall. He finds himself hovering right around the edge of the division constantly. No amount of calling people out or trash talking, not that Hall is known for either of those, would make someone want to fight a grappler such as him with that much at stake. 

However, it’s not just Hall who finds himself in this matchmaking prison. There are heavy wrestlers, and phenomenal distance strikers who fall into this same category. 

Maybe I’m callous believing this should be in the MMA lexicon already, but I do think it identifies a real problem with the ranking system as well as the way that fighters are matched up. You can catch my conversation about it on this episode of Top Turtle MMA Podcast. 

Also, we’ll be running some polls on our social media accounts about landmines in individual division. So make sure you follow @FloCombat and @TopTurtleMMA on Twitter.