Up until this point, we’ve only taken a look at UFC cards. However, I wanted to do a bit of a competitiveness study while outlining the EliteXC card.
When averaging the pre-fight ranking of the favorite and underdog for each match, we get these average match-ups for the past two UFC cards and the 10/4 EliteXC card:
UFC 88: [#27] vs. [#65]
UFC Fight Night 9/17: [#43] vs. [#107]
EliteXC 10/4: [#166] vs. [#254]
While calculating, it was going well for EliteXC, especially since they have women’s matches, where its harder to draw abysmally ranked competitors. Same goes for the lightest male divisions. However, I hadn’t noticed that there are debuting fighters on the card, which absolutely trashed the average rankings, since I had to use the lowest rank possible to average with.
If you only take the top 7 matches (by average ranking) of each card, you get the following results:
UFC 88: [#26] vs. [#47]
UFC Fight Night 9/17: [#39] vs. [#81]
EliteXC 10/4: [#45] vs. [#90]
By using only the 7 most competitive matches (just enough to exclude the debuting fighters), you get a more accurate picture… or do you? It’s awful sad that the EliteXC “main event” falls well below this adjusted average.
Elite XC 10/4
Heavyweight
[#67] Kimbo Slice vs. [#205] Ken Shamrock
Welterweight
[#5] Jake Shields vs. [#23] Paul Daley
Heavyweight
[#5] Andrei Arlovski vs. [#18] Roy Nelson
Women (Open)
[#9] Gina Carano vs. [#43] Kelly Kobald
Middleweight
[#19] Murilo Rua vs. [#54] Benji Radach
Women (Open)
[#17] Cristiane Santos vs. [#39] Yoko Takahashi
Lightweight
[#157] James Edson Berto vs. [#260] Conor Heun
Light Heavyweight
[#79] Aaron Rosa vs. [#80] Seth Petruzelli
Welterweight
[#290] Lorenzo Borgomeo vs. [NR] Mickey Gomez
Welterweight
[NR] Jorge Bouchat vs. [NR] Nicolae Cury
Bantamweight
[NR] David Gomez vs. [NR] Brett Jackowski
Ranking Note: Gray font represents an approximate ranking. An asterisk represents a fighter who is ranked, but too low for an approximation. These two scenarios will clear up slightly as we move forward. “NR” means the fighter is not ranked, due to inactivity, or due to a rating that is at or below the default starter rating.