Since the early development of the rating system, bouts labeled as “no contests” have been completely ignored. This could cause some fighters to be wrongly classified as inactive. As it stands, after 360 days of inactivity, a fighter’s rating will begin a gradual decline due to inactivity penalties. Furthermore, fighters inactive for a full calendar year (365 days), are not displayed on the rankings.
Recently, I have come to the conclusion that completely ignoring no contests is fundamentally wrong. The purpose of the inactivity penalty is to reflect the assumption that the fighter is not practicing their craft on a competitive level. Even though these bouts did not have an official outcome, the fighters were still training, and did compete in a professional bout.
Due to this recent mental development, no contests are now considered bouts, albeit bouts without outcomes. This will affect the “last bout date” of a fighter, which may stave off inactivity penalties, and allow a fighter to be ranked as long as they had some official bout in the past 365 days. This will not affect the application of quality performance penalties, as no contests cannot be considered quality performances under any circumstances.
The only immediate effect on the rankings is that this change allows Takanori Gomi to be reinstated in the rankings as the #1 Lightweight, as he is no longer considered inactive.