Changes in the Next Update

• Featherweight will be expanded to Top 400 (from 350).  This is to accommodate the increased strength of the division.
• Women’s Flyweight division will be expanded to Top 20 (from 15).
• The Lightweight division limit will be reduced from 162 to 161.  162lb fights will now be considered Welterweight fights.  There may be some fluctuations in the rankings as a result of this change.

Near-Future Changes

• New division rankings for Men’s Strawweight “115lb” division.
• Re-alignment of weight range considered for Men’s Flyweight and Bantamweight divisions.

Given the relatively positive overall outcome of the last article, we’re going to give this another go, while leaning a bit more toward the “PASS” as well as when handing out the “Gotcha” flags.

Either way, this is not an attempt to suggest the rating system is more accurate than gambling odds.  Gamblers can analyze each fight individually, while the rating system uses a variety of mathematical routines to supply a primary fighter rating that is focused on ranking recent achievement, with a secondary priority of gauging future expectation.

With that said, there are some caveats to using the rating vs. odds comparison straight-up — the “Gotcha” list:

1. System inability to project the exact effects of a recent divisional change.
2. System inability to project the exact effects of recent inactivity.
3. Poor matchmaking / limited careers / “changing of the guard”.
4. Notable home advantage.
5. System inability to project style differences.
6. System inability to factor in bad judging decisions.

But this stuff (especially #5) is pretty much common sense.  We try to partially factor in #1-#3 when we compute the ratings, but #5 and #6 is something that the human can factor in, that the system can’t.  For the sake of these articles, we’ll attempt to factor in #4 when relevant.  Home advantage can have a slight effect, but likely not enough to sway the “I’d bet on” decision.

Experienced gamblers know that it’s not about being right the most, it’s about making the most money.  So in the usual table, I’ll add the “I’d bet on” column and analyze the rating/odds gap plus points #1-4 that I listed above. I’ll leave #5 and #6 to the fully subjective analyses — of which I’m sure there will be plenty.

Having said all that, let’s get started:

Ratings vs. Odds

One thing to note with this event, is that I have observed some very large shifts in odds, notably in Pierce/Baczynski, Lombard/Palhares and Alloway/Rodriguez.   The odds presented are as of post time and the “I’d Bet On” column reflects that.

Now, to the results — given the odds above:

The PASS suggests that the odds and ratings difference are nearly identical, so neither fighter is a good bet or there are too many gotchas.

There are two favorites worth backing:

The Lombard and Pierce bets are marked because the ratings difference agrees with the odds, but to a larger degree.  Lombard is becoming a weaker favorite (good), but Pierce is becoming a stronger favorite (bad).

If Pierce goes beyond -350, this becomes a PASS.  As for Mendes/Meza, that seems like an obvious bet for Mendes, but I never advocate betting on an MMA fight with odds much wider than -1000.  The statistics just don’t support it.

NOTE: Prior to this update, we had Alloway as a favorite to support at about -150.  As he approached -200 (and above for a period) I had to go with a PASS.

This leaves two underdogs worth considering:

Parke vs. Fletcher: This is a tight one, so tread carefully – with a very small bet.

Beltran vs. Pokrajac: There are still questions about Beltran’s viability at 205, but with such a large gap between the odds and rating difference, Beltran is worth a small-to-medium play.