Fight Club meets competitive fitness...kind of.  

Rush Club, the brainchild of CEO AJ Richards, pits the world's top functional fitness athletes head-to-head in a single-elimination competition using a fitness-to-weight ratio approach similar to that seen in combat sports, including: flyweight, light weight, welter weight, middle weight, and heavy weight. For example: Noah Ohlsen, the current Rush Club Middleweight Champion, only competes against athletes who weigh up to 185 pounds. If Noah wanted to claim the Heavyweight belt, he'd have to take on the the likes of 200+ pounders, like Sam Dancer and Jon Pera. 

Rush Club is only three events in, so it's a statistical challenge to accurately rank each weight class five competitors deep (there simply haven't been enough head-to-heads). What FloElite can do, however, is give you its debut list of pound for pound rankings. 

The logic here is simple: each competitor is ranked according to his/her ability to dominate his/her respective weight class for the longest period of time — so don't come at us with a "Dancer can outlift Ohlsen" type of argument. 

Without further ado: 

2015 Rush Club Pound for Pound Rankings:

1. Noah Ohlsen (Middleweight - Men)
2. Jon Pera (Heavyweight - Men)
3. Elisabeth Akinwale (Heavyweight - Women)
4. Sam Dancer (Heavyweight - Men)
5. Lindy Barber (Middleweight - Women)



1. NOAH OHLSEN
Come on. Who's taking this guy down? In anything? No one. Well...Mat Fraser...maybe. But until the day Fraser comes to Rush Club and rips the title away from Ohlsen, we don't see Miami's hottest young functional fitness athlete losing at this venue. FloElite expects Ohlsen to hold the Rush Club Middleweight belt for a long, long time. Why? Because he's progressing more than just about any other competitor in the game right now, and he's young as hell. Is Ohlsen the Floyd Mayweather of Rush Club? 



2. JON PERA
Pera's not even a current Rush Club champ, and yet we have him as the pound for pound #2?? Really, p4p #2? Yes, really. Sure, Sam Dancer's got the title but remind us when Dancer beat Pera head-to-head. Never happened. In the meantime though, Jon Pera qualified for the CrossFit Games for the third time (2011, 2012, 2015), while Dancer has not qualified for the Games any year. We've still got respect for Dancer though. Keep reading...



3. ELISABETH AKINWALE
No disrespect to Rush Club's Heavyweight Champ, Sarah Urban...but she's basically just baby sitting that Rush Club belt until Akinwale meets her head-to-head (okay, I guess that was a little bit disrespectful). But come on now...Akinwale is a CrossFit Games legend, having finished top 15 at the Games the past three years. She eats, breathes and sleeps this type of stuff. She just needs more at-bats at Rush Club. Stay tuned. 



4. SAM DANCER
The dude can deadliftt nearly 700lbs. His back squat: 600lbs. He's clean and jerked 385lbs before. We get it: he's a specimen. So why's the Champ at #4 in the pound for pound? Because if he and Pera went round-for-round for ten workouts, we think Pera would win six of 'em. And that's enough to bounce Dancer down to #4 in the p4p. Bring on the hate, Sam Dancer fans.



5. LINDY BARBER
We actually expect Lindy Barber to be tested this weekend. The recent CrossFit Games qualifier is putting her title on the line Saturday vs. Nicole Capurso. Here's what we know: the (slight) strength advantage goes to Nicole Capurso, who possesses higher PR's in Clean and Jerk and Squat. BUT Barber has the experience...she has experience competing against the best at the Games, and she knows the Rush Club format. She's the Champ, and she's rounding out our pound for pound ranking until another world-class athlete comes into Rush Club and takes away her Middleweight title.

CURRENT RUSH CLUB CHAMPIONS AND TOP COMPETITORS

MEN'S LIGHTWEIGHT
Champion: Jacob Marinez (Rush Club 001 Winner)
Top Competitors: Chris Gartrell (Rush Club 002 Winner), Aaron Martinez, Gene Francis, Max Rossiter

MEN'S WELTERWEIGHT
Champion: Reza Mashkoori
Top Competitors: Tommy Morgan, Mathew Horton
 
MEN'S MIDDLEWEIGHT
Champion: Noah Ohlsen (Rush Club 002 Winner)
Top Competitors: Jorge Aragon (Rush Club 001 Winner), Andy Timm, Chris Treanor, Eric Roesler, Brian Kunitzer, Justin Fallon

MEN'S HEAVYWEIGHT
Champion: Sam Dancer (Rush Club 001 Winner)
Top Competitors: Jon Pera (Rush Club 003 Winner), Dan Pela, Scott Porter, William Wood

WOMEN'S FLYWEIGHT
Champion: Melissa Popovich (Rush Club 003 Winner)
Top Competitors: Charis Chan

WOMEN MIDDLEWEIGHT
Champion: Lindy Barber (Rush Club 002 Winner)
Top Competitors: Tenni Reed (Rush Club 001 Winner) Melissa Doss, Nikki Carlin, Kelly Sussman

WOMEN HEAVYWEIGHT
Champion: Sarah Urban (Rush Club 001 Winner)
Top Competitors: Elisabeth Akinwale (Rush Club 002 Winner), Joy Summers, Kawika Henderson, Krysty Geezy

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