The Imperfect Science of MMA Fight Data

A boring Saturday morning led me into one of the lesser known MMA fight databases on the Internet: http://www.valetudo.ru

Although their overall accuracy and capacity is far less than that of Sherdog’s Fight Finder, they house quite a bit of eastern European and Russian fight results that are valid.  I presume that Sherdog visits their site and pulls Russian results from them, months, and sometimes even years later.

Some preliminary data retrieval brought to a light a potential prospect that seemingly no one has stumbled upon — as far as I know.  It also presented a common problem and difficulty with MMA data collection.

Case in point, a fighter named Kairat Ahmietov, or is it Kayrat Akhmetov, or maybe it’s Kairat Ahmetov?  Cyrillic to English conversion, typos, and misspellings aside, this type of identity mix-up is not uncommon, especially when dealing with non-Americans.

However, what do you do in this case?

Kairat Ahmietov @ Sherdog (3 wins, 0 losses)

Kairat Ahmetov @ Valetudo (2 wins, 0 losses)

Kayrat Akhmetov @ Valetudo (15 wins, 0 losses)

The worst part about this case, is that Valetudo, the Russian-based site is the main offender for a mix-up situation.  Also visit the 15-0 profile and note that 12 of his 15 opponents are unknown.  The most intriguing part about this fighter, is that he is allegedly a Flyweight.  Given the weakness of the division and its recent action-packed debut into the UFC, the idea of an unknown, potentially undefeated Flyweight with nearly 20 wins is something to salivate over.

But, what about pro/am distinction?  A Youtube journey of some of his fully known fights (opponents with actual names) mentions the word “amateur” in the description.  Then again, does rural Kazakhstan have a legitimate commission to make this type of sanctioning distinction?  Should we care and just record the results anyway, knowing that there are likely thousands of less legitimate fights already in the database?

Just some food for thought, for the thinkers out there.