(Photo courtesy of SI.com)

There’s nothing like a title changing hands, a hatchet being buried, and an upset or two to give the arbitrary numerical rankings system of the Potato Index something to talk about.  Let’s see who’s up and who’s down after UFC 98.

Lyoto Machida +316
He came into this fight as the favorite to win a boring decision.  Less than ten minutes later people were talking about The Machida Era as if it were the Ming Dynasty and lamenting the fate of whatever poor bastard had to face him next.  He proved you can be an elusive, complicated martial artist and still kick serious ass.  Dawning of a new age in MMA, or just a beautiful anomaly?

Rashad Evans -127
Becomes another 205-pound champ to lose his first title defense, and barely lands a punch in the process.  Keeping your back against the cage and trying to counter those whirlwind attacks can probably be ruled out as the strategy to beat Machida, but Evans had to try something.  Back to the middle of the pack.

(I count 11 punches thrown and eight landed cleanly.  That’s precision destruction. Props: MMA Core.)

You can pick your reason for being surprised with the results of last night’s Lyoto Machida-Rashad Evans title fight at UFC 98.  If you expected Machida to win a less than thrilling five-round decision, you got to be completely shocked by seeing him turn into the guy who did the chasing for a change, as well as the guy who used Terminator-like accuracy to do the most damage with the least possible effort.  

If you expected Evans to use his wrestling to control Machida – a position which sounded so rational in my own head just twenty-four hours ago – you got to be surprised for all the above reasons and more.  Most likely your head is still spinning, and not just for lack of sleep.

Machida beat down a respected UFC champ (okay, one defending his title for the first time, but still) and made it look absurdly easy.  He did it in a fashion that has us all wondering if the fighter who might eventually dethrone him has even been born yet.  Just calling that performance ‘dominant’ doesn’t quite cut it.  Maybe that’s why I couldn’t help but be reminded of the Anderson Silva of two years ago, even as Anderson Silva fights like the Lyoto Machida of two years ago. I’m telling you, it’s spooky.

(Yep, that’s how bad it was.)

Yeah, I know that he was technically ineligible to receive a Submission of the Night bonus at UFC 98.  And the fight wasn’t competitive enough (read: at all) to garner consideration for Fight of the Night.  But when you beat ass with the kind of dominating, precise beauty that Lyoto Machida did last night, knocking out Rashad Evans and looking like a perfect fighting machine sent back in time by a futuristic Karate-centric society to teach us all a valuable lesson, it really seems like they ought to create a new bonus category to honor you.