Ultimate Grappling asks the question, I answer

Is Matt Lindland #1 at 185? No, Matt Lindland isn't even Top10 at 185 at this point.....

I like Matt and enjoy his matches but I can't make a good case for him even being a top 10 middleweight at this point in his career. The facts just don't support it.
Sure you point out the silver medal and say he is one of the most dominant wrestlers in MMA ever, but looking at his fight card combined with his inactivity has rendered him kinda meaningless in the big scheme of things at 185.

Looking at his fight resum'e, the wins he has don't warrant him any consideration for elite status at 185. His last two fights at middleweight have been against Jeremy Horn and Carlos Newton. I don't want to denigrate the talents of these two guys because in their day they were high level competitors, but at this point the tread is off the tire as far as their fighting careers. Lindland's victories over them are kinda meaningless at this point due to that fact. His other two most recent fights have been outside of the 185 division, at 205 with Quinton Jackson and 205+ with Fedor Emilianenko. While Matt made a good accounting for himself in both those fights (some argue he deserved the win over Rampage), at the end of the day they were losses on his card and didn't really give us any measure of his worth at 185.

Another drawback of his fight card is the overall weakness of competition he has faced and beaten at 185. I generally think the most impartial and best rankings are those at fightmatrix.com. To use a ncaa basketball term, Matt's RPI ain't too good in my book. Lindland hasn't beaten anyone in their Top 25, showing only a loss to #23 Murilo Bustamante. His quality wins are over #27 Vitale, #41 Doerkson, #42 Jeremy Horn, #53 Ivan Salaverry, and unranked Lutter and Almeida. To borrow another NCAA analogy, that would have Matt on the bubble and possibly headed to the NIT, not in discussion for a number one seed.

In addition, Lindland's inactivity in general and at 185 in particular precludes any serious talk of him for #1 at middleweight. Matt has been in a contractual tussle with BodogFight but commonsense should have told him that the only big money fights he was getting out of Bodog was the Fedor fight.....nothing else made sense monetarily. Why it took him about a year to figure this out is beyond me. Matt has signed with Affliction/Golden Boy and hopefully he will be more active this year but I have to wonder about the level of competition he will face with Golden Boy. There were would seem to be little high level competition for him to face that isn't already locked up in competing orgs like EliteXC, Dream, or Strikeforce.