FightMetric

Check Us Out in the UFC 100 Magazine

noreply@blogger.com (FightMetric) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 12:36:42 PDT

It's a little like playing Where's Waldo, but if you look closely, you can find FightMetric in the premier issue of new UFC magazine.

Can't find it? Check out the feature on The 20 Greatest Fights Ever, starting on page 108. The yellow band at the bottom of the subsequent pages contains some interesting factoids from the UFC's history. And if you follow it all the way until the end on page 116...there we are. How could you miss it?

Why Won't Judges Call a Round 10-10?

noreply@blogger.com (FightMetric) — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 14:38:30 PDT

With the judging at the TUF 9 Finale raising so much ire this week, much of the focus has been on two fights that were not broadcast on Spike. We have now posted the stats for two controversial decisions on the undercard, the fight between Melvin Guillard and Gleison Tibau and the fight between Brad Blackburn and Edgar Garcia.

Both fights produced scores with the same issue: Two of the rounds were too close to call, with the third round producing a clear winner. In both cases, the system produced a score of 30-29. Of course, to do this, you have to be willing to call a 10-10 round. This is no problem for an objective stat system but seemingly impossible for a human judge. It wasn't always that way. Back at UFC 33, the first UFC event held in Las Vegas, there were three fights that had judges call at least one 10-10 round. Only one event since has had as many as two fights with a 10-10 round. The judges at UFC 33 are the same exact ones working shows today. What changed?

What Good is Top Position...

noreply@blogger.com (FightMetric) — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 13:18:28 PDT

...when you're getting beaten by the guy on the bottom? Round two of last night's fight between Diego Sanchez and Clay Guida was an object lesson in why top position is not always better. While Guida did maintain top control, he got outstruck 16-3 in power shots to the head, thanks to a bevy of elbows coming from Sanchez on the bottom. Joe Rogan made the comment that those might have been the most effective elbows from bottom that we'd ever seen, but we've seen those elbows used to pretty good effect before. Anderson Silva vs. Travis Lutter and Kenny Florian vs. Joe Lauzon are some other good examples of the devastating effect of this under-utilized weapon. They very well might be the most effective strike that most fighters will never use.

An impressive showing by Sanchez is made more impressive by the advances he has made in putting offense into his guard. What a difference this was from the guard he displayed against Jon Fitch, where Sanchez landed basically no strikes of consequence on the ground. In the Fitch fight, Sanchez concentrated almost exclusively on submissions. In the fight against Guida, Sanchez threw strikes where available and still managed to latch-on a few good submission attempts.

The scores from the fight show a victory for Sanchez 30-26, though that could very easily be 29-27, as Glenn Trowbridge scored it. Round 1 was a 10-8 round, using our objective criteria (score over 100 and more than 6x opponents' score) and Round 2 goes to Sanchez thanks to his offensive guard. Round 3 is basically a toss-up, which the system gives to Sanchez on damage, but could easily go Guida's way instead.

Also, check out the stats from Joe Stevenson vs. Nate Diaz and from Chris Lytle vs. Kevin Burns.

Rich Franklin = Nailbiter?

noreply@blogger.com (FightMetric) — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 19:39:36 PDT

Historically, Rich Franklin is not a fighter you associated with razor-thin decisions. For the better part of his career, Franklin either won big or lost big (thanks to Anderson Silva and Lyoto Machida). The exception to this rule was Franklin's fight against Yushin Okami two years ago. This was a very important fight for him, because a win would get him another crack at the middleweight belt, while a loss would set him back severely. Franklin fought a cautious fight and capitalized on Okami's slow start, just squeaking by for a decision.

Franklin's win over Wanderlei Silva on Saturday night marked his second consecutive close decision. The stats for the fight show a clear victory in Round 1 for Franklin, but then two close rounds that could have gone either way. This, following a coin-flip kind of decision against Dan Henderson, that could have easily been called a draw. Is this Franklin being cautious with his career, facing stiffer competition, or is this kind of fight one that we can expect consistenly from the new Rich Franklin?

Also, check out the stats from Dan Hardy vs. Marcus Davis to see if Davis has a case when he says he didn't lose, and look at the numbers from Cain Velasquez vs. Cheick Kongo to see just how many of those little punches to the head Velasquez landed.

UPDATE: By popular demand, we've added the stats for the fight between Spencer Fisher and Caol Uno.

Is Lyoto Machida the Best Fighter in the UFC?

noreply@blogger.com (FightMetric) — Sun, 24 May 2009 19:30:26 PDT

The answer to the above question is highly subjective, however, there are a few things that we can look at statistically to make some personal conclusions. We've now posted Lyoto's performance stats from last night (along with Hughes vs. Serra), but here were the facts going into the fight last night:

Machida has the lowest SApM (strikes absorbed per minute) of any fighter in UFC history by a very large margin. Coming into the fight last night, Machida's SApM was 0.58. After the fight, that dropped to 0.55. The next lowest SApM belongs to Anderson Silva, but it's not even close. Silva's SApM is 0.73, even after 25 minutes of not getting hit by Thales Leites. Just as a reminder, Fedor's SApM is 0.53.

Machida is the second-most accurate striker in the UFC (for fighters with at least 300 strike attempts), with a hit rate of 65%. The only fighter better is Silva.

Coming into the fight, Machida had the second-highest takedown success rate (for fighters with at least 10 attempts) at 82%. The only fighter better is Gray Maynard.

Machida's takedown defense rate is 84%, second best (among fighters with 25 takedowns attempted against them), trailing only Georges St. Pierre.

Machida has scored a knockdown on all but one of his UFC opponents (can you name the one he didn't?). After last night's thrashing, he's scored nine knockdowns in seven fights, a rate that matches Chuck Liddell at his peak.

He is now only the third undefeated fighter to hold a belt in the modern UFC era (can you name the other two?).

Again, there's no objectively correct answer to the question in the title. But these are some fun numbers to play with while making your own decision.

Seeking Volunteers for Beta-Test

noreply@blogger.com (FightMetric) — Sun, 24 May 2009 16:46:30 PDT

UPDATE: Thank you to those who volunteered. We will hopefully have more opportunities soon for others who wish to help.

We're looking for a few people to help test out a new feature. This will only take 10 minutes of your time and should be a lot of fun. If you can help us out, just send an email to info@fightmetric.com and we'll get you the particulars.

Worst Title Fight Ever?

noreply@blogger.com (FightMetric) — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 15:36:27 PDT

We've got the full stats up for the title fight between Anderson Silva and Thales Leites, but check out a post we did at Bloody Elbow for an answer to the question: Was this the worst title fight in UFC history? There is a suprising amount of competition for the (dis)honor.

Win, Lose, but Never Draw

noreply@blogger.com (FightMetric) — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 07:27:44 PDT

It's hard to advocate for draws. They're usually the worst resolution to a contest because no one feels like anything was settled. It's not fair for someone to work so hard and have "nothing" to show for it. But what's more unfair is to lose when you don't deserve to. Last night's main event between Martin Kampmann and Carlos Condit was a fight so evenly-matched that neither fighter deserved to lose. Looking at the in-depth report on the fight, we see a first for a match posted here: Both the ten-point must system and the overall score call this fight a draw. Each round was exceedingly close, with both Round 2 and the overall score falling within our four-point margin for error.

A draw is not a No Contest. In a No Contest, it's functionally as if the fight never happened. A draw means a hard-fought effort that was equal to the other fighter's. In a sport filled with disappointing matches where guys just fight not to lose, it's sad that one of two people really fighting to win has to lose because judges won't consider the third way.

Site Update

noreply@blogger.com (FightMetric) — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 12:07:18 PDT

There are a lot of very exciting things happening behind-the-scenes here, both short-term and long-term. We will hopefully be able to share some of this news with you pretty soon, but posting will be light for the immediate future. Thanks to everyone who sent requests for fight reports. Rest assured your requests are not denied, they're merely delayed.

Rampage-Jardine and Requests

noreply@blogger.com (FightMetric) — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 10:37:19 PDT

The stats are up for the main event fight between Quinton Jackson and Keith Jardine, but that's not all there is to this post. The previous post asked what kinds of reports people were interested in, if not the most timely information. The comments received were much-appreciated, and the most frequently requested thing was to focus more on the most controversial bouts, even if the fight or fighters were no long relevant. This is interesting because it's exactly how we started the FightMetric project, putting out reports on only the most hotly-contested decisions in MMA history.

One commenter rightly pointed out that our focus seems to be entirely on UFC matches, at the expense of other organizations. That would be correct. We are currently engaged in wrapping-up Phase II of the FightMetric project, which involves compiling data on every fight in modern UFC history. Until that's finished (and it'll be sooner than you might expect), we can't divert our attention away from that goal. I don't think it would surprise anyone that the commercial appeal of UFC data is far greater than the appeal for data from all other organizations combined.

So our more specific question is: What UFC fights would you like to see stats for? Take a look at the current offerings and then leave your requests in a comment. Anything besides Rutten-Randleman?

Again, apologies for this, we will get to all of the others in due time, but for now, consider this request to be UFC only.

What Do You Want to See?

noreply@blogger.com (FightMetric) — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 14:16:57 PST

After a much-needed vacation, we're back and have posted some new stuff leading up to UFC 96. Check out the report on the fight between Keith Jardine and Brandon Vera and a career* report for Keith Jardine.

This brings up an important question for us. For the past few months, we've focused coverage on the fighters in the top few matches of the upcoming UFC event. That's worked out great, but it means that we're running out of brand new material to feature. In general, the same few fighters make appearences at the top of UFC cards and we've already shown you what there is to see on them. Taking UFC 97 as an example, we've pretty much covered Anderson Silva, Chuck Liddell, and Shogun Rua.

We'd like to ask what you'd rather see: info on fighters deeper into the upcoming card or info on events long past with fighters that may no longer be timely? Leave us a comment and we'll try to accomodate.

*The report contains info on all fights for which there is video readily available

We're Lucky to Still Have Fight Night on Spike

noreply@blogger.com (FightMetric) — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 14:01:16 PST

We've posted some new fight reports that concern some of the fighters on the main card this Saturday night at UFC 95. One of the reports is for the fight between Nate Marquardt and Ivan Salaverry from way back at Ultimate Fight Night 1. This was the main event of the inaugural free card on Spike and was expected to be a great match-up. Instead, we got one of the most uneventful fights in UFC history. People can argue subjectively about what they consider to be the worst fight ever, but consider this: Marquardt-Salaverry is the lowest-scoring three-round UFC fight that we've tracked so far. After a main event like that, we're lucky that there was a Fight Night 2.

The other reports up are:

Diego Sanchez vs. Nick Diaz

Diego Sanchez vs. John Alessio

Josh Koscheck vs. Diego Sanchez

An Unfortunate Night of Firsts for BJ Penn

noreply@blogger.com (FightMetric) — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 14:29:14 PST

We've released the full stats from the drubbing GSP put on Penn, but did not point out the historically salient points contained within. St. Pierre did a few things last night that no one has been able to do to Penn over 18 fights and more than seven years.

He Passed Penn's Guard Like No Other

Penn has a bad history with opponents who can pass his guard. Including last night, his guard has been passed in five fights and he has not won any of them. But even in his losses to Machida and Pulver and his draw to Uno, Penn was able to regain guard after all but one of the passes. All told, prior to last night, opponents had advanced past guard 10 times over the 200 minutes in Penn's career.

St. Pierre equaled that number in just 20 minutes. St. Pierre passed to half-guard four times and to side control six times. This is especially significant when you compare those numbers to the first GSP-Penn fight. In both cases, St. Pierre was able to get Penn to the ground four times. But in the first fight, St. Pierre did not pass Penn's guard even once. This time, he passed it within just a few seconds of hitting the mat.

He Cut Penn

Penn has the two natural characteristics that make a fighter very hard to deal with: an iron chin and uncuttable skin. Consider him the anti-Fedor. Penn's career has been remarkable because, win or lose, he always comes out from the fight looking exactly the same as when he came in.

While its true that he hasn't been hit that many times and so hasn't given opponents many chances to cut him, it's not as if he's never been hit with good punches or elbows before. Through all that, no one has been able to do any significant damage to Penn. St. Pierre put an end to that streak in the third round.

He Outstruck Penn 4-1

It's logical to say that good fighters hit their opponents more than they get hit themselves. Penn is no different. Over his career he has outstruck his opponents 549-254. On a per-minute basis he has absorbed 1.225 strikes per minute (SApM) and landed 2.65 strikes per minute (SLpM), a ratio of more than 2-1. (Note: These figures only reference the most significant strikes and are not complete totals).

Previously, Penn had only been outstruck twice in a fight. In his loss to Machida, he was barely outstruck 29-28. In their second fight, Matt Hughes landed exactly twice as many strikes as Penn, beating him 32-16. St. Pierre even doubled that ratio. He landed 49 heavy strikes compared to just 12 for Penn, a 4-1 ratio. Using SApM and SLpM, we see that St. Pierre landed twice as many strikes per minute (2.65 strikes) as a usual Penn opponent (1.225 strikes) and absorbed just 25% (0.6 strikes) of the usual number of strikes that Penn typically lands (2.65 strikes).

Full Stats from St. Pierre-Penn II

noreply@blogger.com (FightMetric) — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 00:09:47 PST

Analysis of these stats will have to wait until a little later on Sunday, but we've already posted the full stats from the rematch between Georges St. Pierre and BJ Penn. Suffice it to say that GSP did a few things that no one has ever been able to do to Penn before.

Also up is an updated career report for Lyoto Machida, which contains the stats from his match against Thiago Silva.

Check back later for a more detailed analysis of GSP-Penn II.

How and When Do UFC Fights End?

noreply@blogger.com (FightMetric) — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 08:25:38 PST

Over time, it seems, people are starting to latch-on to the idea of numbers and their role in MMA. It may still be a while before the hardcore analytics are widespread, but it's nice to see people asking questions about the sport and then looking for actual data instead of just guessing at the answer.

I got a tip from Pramit Mohapatra of FightTicker. com (one of the more intelligent and well-spoken online MMA communities) of a nice debate going on regarding the length of fights and the methods by which they're finished. He asked for some real data on the question of finishes vs. time and we were happy to provide it.

Check out Pramit's post with the results to see answers to the big questions:

Do fight finishes diminish as the fight goes longer?
Does the trend apply to both KO/TKO's and submissions?
Are you more likely to see a last-minute knockout or a last-minute submission?

Fedor Emelianenko vs. Lyoto Machida

noreply@blogger.com (FightMetric) — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 08:26:24 PST

First things first: We're still looking for volunteers for the Reach Data Project. It takes very little time to participate and it would help us a great deal.

We have a few new things up today. The first is an updated report on Fedor, which now includes the bout against Andrei Arlovski. The other new material all relates to Lyoto Machida, including a career report, and reports on his fights against Sam Greco and Sam Hoger.

Most people wouldn't put Machida in the same league as Fedor (at least not yet), but there is something very important that ties the two together. To demostrate, let's play a little matching game.

One of the best ways to measure effective defense and dominance is to look at the number of strikes a fighter absorbs. Because of variable fight lengths, the easiest way to consistently calculate this is to figure the number of strikes absorbed divided by the number of minutes fought. That gives you the number of strikes absorbed per minute of fighting, which we abbreviate as SApM. Here are some SApM figures for the five current UFC champions:

Fighter A: 0.71 SApM

Fighter B: 1.01 SApM

Fighter C: 1.23 SApM

Fighter D: 1.39 SApM

Fighter E: 2.7 SApM

The fighters in question are (in alphabetical order): Rashad Evans, Frank Mir, BJ Penn, Anderson Silva, and Georges St. Pierre. Can you guess which SApM number belongs to which fighter? The answers are pretty predictable:

Anderson Silva: 0.71 SApM

Georges St. Pierre: 1.01 SApM

BJ Penn: 1.23 SApM

Rashad Evans: 1.39 SApM

Frank Mir: 2.7 SApM

Let's wrap things up with two more fighters' numbers:

Fedor Emelianenko: 0.59 SApM

Lyoto Machida: 0.64 SApM

Both Fedor and Machida have proven harder to hit than all of the UFC's champions. And it's not like there is a shortage of data on any of these guys. These numbers are from their entire careers. Does it mean Fedor and Machida are better than the other fighters? Not necessarily...this is just one subset of their entire fighting profile. But it is interesting to note that Fedor and Machida come in #1 and #2 in terms of the hardest guys to hit in MMA history.

Join the FightMetric Reach Data Project

noreply@blogger.com (FightMetric) — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 17:41:03 PST

FightMetric may be synonymous with advanced analysis, but that doesn't mean we are ignoring some of the simpler data out there. The simplest form of analysis that we can do across our database is based on personal characteristics. Does the younger fighter win more often? How much of a height difference is necessary to confer an advantage on the taller fighter? However, there's one piece of physical data that we've found inconsistent and hard to accumulate: reach stats.

Simply put, there's no reliable source of reach information. To start, the UFC (and other organizations) didn't even bother tracking this information until a couple of years ago. To make matters worse, the numbers thrown up on-screen right before UFC fights vary wildly for the same fighter across different fights. For example, Gabriel Gonzaga is listed as having a 72-inch reach in his fight against Mirko Filipovic, but listed with a 77-inch reach in his fight against Kevin Jordan.

Clearly, any study of reach will have to be done with care. Because of the inconsistencies in these numbers, the best way to go about it is to get as many measurements as possible for each fighter. And that's where we'd like to enlist your help for a little experiment in crowdsourcing.

What we need is some volunteers with access to a good UFC DVD library. The UFC began showing reach data starting at UFC 54, so we'll want to look at every fight since that event. If you want to help and have access to video of those events, send an email to info@fightmetric.com listing the events that you'd like to track. We'll keep a running list of the events we still need here:

http://www.fightmetric.com/Reach.html

As we get volunteers, we'll cross the events off that list. Once you've been assigned an event, take down the reach numbers for each fighter on the card and then email the data back. It's a quick and easy and will go a long way toward getting some consistent reach data that can be used to do real analysis. We really appreciate the help.

Note: If you volunteer for an event for which there is a DVD, you are responsible for the data for every fight on that card, not just the televised ones. For Fight Night cards and numbered events that don't yet have a DVD, you would only have to track the fighters that appeared on the broadcast.

Does Anyone Think Franklin Won All Three Rounds...

noreply@blogger.com (FightMetric) — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 08:32:17 PST

...aside from Chris Watts, that is?

If you want to see FightMetric's take on the round scoring, check out the report on the fight between Dan Henderson and Rich Franklin. Nobody likes split decisions, but do people really like draws any better?

It's exceedingly rare to see a split decision in which more than one round is in question. Usually, there's a single round that's very close and one judge sees it a different way than the other two. The Henderson-Franklin fight saw one judge that differed on two rounds. As far as we've tracked, there has only been one decision in which one judge saw all three rounds differently than the other two judges (i.e., scores of 30-27, 30-27, and 27-30). That was the TUF 4 Finale fight between Matt Serra and Chris Lytle.

We also have updated career reports for Franklin, Henderson, and Mauricio "Shogun" Rua.

Stick around for some Lyoto Machida material coming your way over the next two weeks. It's pretty amazing stuff.

Franklin, Shogun, and UFC 93

noreply@blogger.com (FightMetric) — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 14:27:34 PST

It's the week of UFC 93, and that means a look back at the careers of some of the top fighters on the card. Today marks the release of career reports for Rich Franklin and Mauricio "Shogun" Rua.

We also have two new in-depth fight reports. The first is for a fight that many considered the 2005 Fight of the Year, the battle between Shogun and Antonio Rogerio Nogueira.

The other fight is significant because it has the second highest fighter effectiveness score in UFC history. The fight between Rich Franklin and David Loiseau had Franklin throw up a score of 788. That comes in second to Georges St. Pierre's 814 against Jon Fitch.

Once UFC 93 is behind us, we'll shift our attention to UFC 94 and the statistical wonder that is Lyoto Machida. So we ask you: If you could choose one fight from Machida's career for us to create an in-depth report, which would it be? Leave your pick in a comment, and keep in mind, the fight against BJ Penn is already done.

Updates from UFC 92

noreply@blogger.com (FightMetric) — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 17:27:51 PST

One piece of evidence as to the progress of the FightMetric project is the number of career reports we've been able to create for many of the biggest fighters in the world. UFC 92 was a good event, as we had five of the six main fighters with complete career reports. We have updated all five of those reports for Frank Mir, Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, Rashad Evans, Forrest Griffin, and Quinton Jackson.

In addition, we've posted the complete stats from the fight between Rashad Evans and Forrest Griffin.

We'll be shifting to coverage of UFC 93 immediately, so look out for stats from the careers of Rich Franklin, Mauricio "Shogun" Rua, and Mark Coleman.

UFC 92 Is Coming to Town

noreply@blogger.com (FightMetric) — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 06:22:07 PST

The long break between UFC 91 and UFC 92 is coming to a close which means we'll be ramping back up to provide a bunch of material leading up the final show of 2008. First off, we have a career report for Frank Mir up today. And since the readers of this blog have spoken, we will have a bunch of great stats on Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira for you pretty soon. We may even throw some Wanderlei stuff in there. Stay tuned.

It's Randy Couture Week!

noreply@blogger.com (FightMetric) — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 05:52:37 PST

Just like we did for Fedor when he had his first fight in a while, we're devoting this week to covering the career of Randy Couture. We'll be releasing more Couture stats throughout the week and will be writing a series of columns on their relevance over at FanHouse.

Here's the release schedule for the week:

Monday: Randy Couture vs. Tito Ortiz
Tuesday: Randy Couture vs. Maurice Smith
Wednesday: Randy Couture vs. Pedro Rizzo I
Thursday: Randy Couture vs. Tim Sylvia
Friday: Randy Couture - Career TPR Report

UFC 91 and Onward

noreply@blogger.com (FightMetric) — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 07:10:27 PST

We're getting set for UFC 91 with full coverage of Randy Couture, Brock Lesnar, Kenny Florian, and Joe Stevenson. We've already posted one of the most remarkeable fights in Couture's career, his absolutely dominant win over Tito Ortiz. Stay tuned over the next couple of weeks for more on Couture and the other fighters above.

We're also looking ahead toward the UFC 92 mega-show on December 29. The downside of having such a stacked card is that we'll have to prioritize our efforts. When it comes down to it, we only have enough bandwidth to cover one of the two former Pride superstars on the card. So we're asking for your feedback in the poll below:

For which fighter would you rather see career stats and detailed fight data: ( surveys)

The poll will be open for two weeks, so get your vote in now.

The Stats for Bisping-Leben

noreply@blogger.com (FightMetric) — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 14:05:51 PDT

With UFC 89 in the rear-view mirror, we turn our attention to UFC 90, less than a week away. But before we shift completely, here are the stats for the main event fight between Michael Bisping and Chris Leben.

Stand-up striking battles are notoriously difficult to judge. It's very hard for judges to keep track of who landed what and how many. People get swayed by just a few strikes here or there without even knowing it. Check out what the stats had to say and see if it meshes with what you remember.

UPDATE: Check out our article at FanHouse for a more detailed analysis of these stats.

Getting Ready for UFC 89

noreply@blogger.com (FightMetric) — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 16:52:13 PDT

The new Featured Content space on the homepage is now full of new content leading up to UFC 89. Check out:

Michael Bisping vs. Rashad Evans for the fight that made Bisping drop down a weight class. The stats tell a pretty good story; Bisping outstruck Evans handily, but couldn't avoid the six takedowns.

Chris Leben vs. Patrick Cote for a prototypical Leben fight against a more technical striker. Instead of brawling, Leben pinned Cote against the fence and attacked with short shots in the clinch and on the ground. It's a style you might see again against Bisping.

Chris Leben vs. Kalib Starnes because there actually was a time when Starnes was a respected UFC middleweight.

Keith Jardine vs. Wilson Gouveia is a nice piece of history because, to date, it's the UFC fight with the highest total leg kicks landed between the two fighters.

Brandon Vera Career TPR Report charts the ups and recent downs of the once highly-touted Vera.

And remember, you can access the full archive of FightMetric reports on our new central reports page found here.