MMA Statistics – Page 35

An Organized Scheme to Beat a Rating System?

Posted on November 7, 2013 by Jason

Let’s face it, no rating system or ranking list is perfect, not even the one used here at Fight Matrix. There are varying perspectives, varying protocols and complex calculations (well, at least here) at play.

Where the media lists and personal lists suffer, which is in the realm of lacking knowledge and bias — we excel. Where they excel, which is in the realm of “common sense”, we are subject to suffer. I say “subject to”, because a good software-based rating system depends on norms and works to eliminate outliers through scenario-based handling. Though, sometimes even this ounce of prevention fails.

Today, we veer off from MMA, into the world of boxing. Folks, I introduce you to Ali Raymi.

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Stat of the Day: A Legendary “Can Crusher”

Posted on September 13, 2013 by Jason

If you are a long-time viewer of the site, you are probably familiar with the term, “quality performance”. If not, we made a blog post about it and the associated decay way back in 2008. Simply put, a fighter registers a quality performance when they fight another fighter reasonably close to or above their own rating and they deliver an outcome that is not egregiously beneath what is expected based on the ratings difference. So, it is important to know that quality performances are relative.

In other words, Fedor Emelianenko in his prime would not have registered a quality performance over #500 ranked Joe Schmoe, regardless of the outcome. However, if Joe Schmoe managed a split decision loss against Fedor, Joe would earn the quality performance — so these CAN be earned even in losses.

When looking at fighters with at least 15 wins that have had winning records, one fighter stands way above the rest.

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UFC Shows in Brazil — Bet on the Brazilians, but Why?

Posted on September 2, 2013 by Jason

In the past two years (and one week), we’ve seen 8 UFC shows take place in Brazil, with this amount steadily increasing — 1 in 2011, 3 in 2012, 7 in 2013 (3 still to come).

Given that a large majority of UFC shows and their fighter population reside outside of Brazil, how “fair” is it to these fighters that so many of their fights take place in Brazil against Brazilian opponents? When we say “fair”, we refer to two things — the “hometown advantage” and the matchmaking.

The “hometown advantage” is something we looked at very briefly a couple of years ago, when some bookmakers like Bwin started to claimed that in sports such as Poker, it can give you what you need to win. We found just under a 2% advantage for the home fighter (a hometown fighter with say… 98 rating points would have a 50/50 chance versus an outsider with 100 rating points). However, this included a slew of contests that involved neighboring entities (example — US vs. Canada) and I think we can all agree a United States vs. Brazil or even more extreme, Japan vs. Brazil at Brazil is a far cry from the aforementioned border wars. Plus, the database is much, much more mature now. A detailed re-visit of this analysis of this is better saved for another day.

Using the fighter “nationality” setting you see on our ranking pages, I isolated 60 fights from the 8 previously mentioned UFC shows that involved a Brazil vs. non-Brazil fighter in Brazil, that resulted in non-draw, non-no contest outcomes. Brazilian fighters won 47 of these fights, a win rate of 78.33%. If we expand this window back to 1/1/2010 and include all organizations where we know the nationalities of both fighters (399 fights), this win rate drops significantly to 62.15% — though is still sizable.

So, how much of this is the mysterious “hometown advantage” and how much of this is matchmaking?

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Fight Matrix & Sherdog (Man vs. Machine) Rankings Compared: Heavyweight

Posted on August 5, 2013 by Jason

Sherdog, one of the most, if not THE most respected MMA web site on the Internet has produced Top 10 rankings for quite sometime. I thought I would take a look at their latest Top 10s and compare the differences between the fights they rank and the ones we rank, including some commentary.

Heavyweight

Rank	Fight Matrix	Diff	Sherdog
1	Cain Velasquez	=	Cain Velasquez
2	Junior dos Santos	=	Junior dos Santos
3	Daniel Cormier	-1	Fabricio Werdum
4	Antonio Silva	-1	Daniel Cormier
5	Fabricio Werdum	+2	Antonio Silva
6	Alistair Overeem	=	Alistair Overeem
7	Frank Mir	=	Frank Mir
8	Mark Hunt	Next 5	Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira
9	Josh Barnett	=	Josh Barnett
10	Stipe Miocic	=	Stipe Miocic
Next 5	Travis Browne Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira Roy Nelson Stefan Struve Alexander Volkov		Travis Browne Gabriel Gonzaga Mark Hunt Roy Nelson Stefan Struve

The two rankings are eerily similar, with the first notable difference being Fabricio Werdum.

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Undefeated Winners’ Performance in Immediate Rematch / Winners’ Performance after KO

Posted on July 15, 2013 by Jason

I had every intent to create a blog entry, detailing the performance of undefeated winners in an immediate rematch.

However, in known professional MMA history, Chris Weidman will be the first undefeated fighter to give his opponent (Anderson Silva) an immediate rematch after winning the first match — unless it is beaten by a bout scheduled to take place prior to the rematch.

On another note, I found 303 immediate rematches in which the original fighter won by KO or TKO. In the rematches, the original winner was 191-105-5 (2 NC) — a win % of 63.5% (excluding the no contests).

Narrowing the target down to known Middleweight contests w/ an original finish of TKO or TKO, the original winner was 7-6-1 (50%)
Narrowing the target down to round 2 finishes KOs and TKOs, the original winner was 43-19-2 (67.2%).
Getting ultra-specific, there is only one known immediate rematch in which the original match took place at Middleweight with a round 2 KO/TKO finish, and the original winner (Roman Dosenko) lost.

New Feature: Fight Outcomes by Weight Class

Posted on May 28, 2013 by Oleg

Another fun statistic has been added to our collection: Fight outcomes broken down by weight division.

MMA Fight Outcomes by Weight Class

UFC Fight Outcomes by Weight Class

Bellator Fight Outcomes by Weight Class

Also check out the other entries in this series:

MMA Fight Outcomes by Year

UFC Fight Outcomes By Year

Bellator Fight Outcomes By Year

Combat Age: Our Latest Creation

Posted on April 29, 2013 by Jason

Now visible in the fighter ranking “hover overs”, is our initial iteration of a statistic we call combat age.

For years, fans have subjectively argued about which fighters were battle-worn and have attempted to link this to the foreshadowing of the end of a fighter’s prime. With combat age, we are looking to add our objective touch to this.

At it’s most basic level, one can equate “combat age” to “dog years” in that it will mirror the basic human lifecycle. With this new computation, we expect fighters to hit their respective “peak” in the years that your typical adult “peaks” in life, somewhere between 25 and 40. We will expect most fighters to start their descent at some point in their 40s and be far removed from their peak by 60. Please keep in mind, that there will be anomalies, just like in life. These anomalies (for the most part) will be welcome. Anomalies we cannot prevent, are those that basic fight data can’t convey, such as serious career-altering injuries, non-MMA fight careers or a predisposition to not get knocked out (incredibly hard heads).

In this computation, we will be considering:

Biological age.
Total fights.
Total losses.
Stoppage losses.
Cumulative fight time.

The included factors, as well as the weighting of said factors are subject to and may very likely change.

For a quick demo of combat age.

	Age	Combat Age	Diff
Forrest Griffin	33	44	+11
Wanderlei Silva	36	56	+20
Georges St. Pierre	31	38	+7
Andrei Arlovski	34	50	+16
Anderson Silva	38	44	+6

Fight Outcomes by Year: Bellator

Posted on April 17, 2013 by Oleg

Expanding on our “Fight Outcomes By Year” feature, we compiled the statistics for Bellator MMA:

http://www.fightmatrix.com/mma-records-stats/bellator-fight-outcomes-by-year/

Of course the all MMA fight outcomes by year and UFC fight outcomes by year stats are still available.

We’ll be adding breakdowns for more organizations and by weight class in the future.

New Feature: Fight Outcomes By Year

Posted on April 12, 2013 by Oleg

A couple of years ago, we published a compilation of all UFC fight outcomes by year, from 1993 to 2010.

By popular request, we decided to make this a permanent feature. We created a page for UFC statistics, and another one for all MMA fights in our database. There are also some statistics on fight outcome percentages, and a breakdown of different decision types. So read on:

All MMA Fight Outcomes By Year

UFC Fight Outcomes by Year

Thanks to Underground Forum (UG) members crazychris & D241 for the suggestion!

FightMatrix Program: TUF 17 Finale (04-13-2013)

Posted on April 11, 2013 by Jason

Bantamweight (135)
[#4] Urijah Faber (27-6-0, -458) vs. [#27] Scott Jorgensen (14-6-0, +354)
Urijah Faber is the All-Time #11 ranked Bantamweight and #10 ranked Absolute fighter.
Scott Jorgensen is the All-Time #18 ranked Bantamweight fighter.

Last 3 Fights: Urijah Faber (2-1-0)
2013-02-23: W vs. [#59BW] Ivan Menjivar (25-10-0) via Submission (Rear Naked Choke) in 4:34 of round 1
2012-07-21: L vs. [#1BW] Renan Barao (30-1-0) via UD (50-45, 49-46, 49-46)
2011-11-19: W vs. [*] Brian Bowles (10-2-0) via Submission (Guillotine Choke) in 1:27 of round 2

Last 3 Fights: Scott Jorgensen (1-2-0)
2012-12-08: W vs. [#211BW] John Albert (7-4-0) via Submission (Rear Naked Choke) in 4:59 of round 1
2012-06-08: L vs. [#6BW] Eddie Wineland (20-8-1) via KO (Punches) in 4:10 of round 2
2012-02-04: L vs. [#1BW] Renan Barao (30-1-0) via UD (30-27, 30-27, 30-27)

Days Since Last Pro Fight: Urijah Faber 49, Scott Jorgensen 126
Previous Match-up Record: No previous match-ups.
Wins Against Common Opposition: Urijah Faber leads 4-2
.

Middleweight (185)
[#152] Uriah Hall (7-2-0, -357) vs. [NA] Kelvin Gastelum (5-0-0, +278)

Last 3 Fights: Uriah Hall (3-0-0)
2012-06-15: W vs. [#509MW] Nodar Kuduxashvili (5-1-0) via UD (29-28, 29-28, 29-28)
2012-02-10: W vs. [#661MW] Daniel Akinyemi (3-1-0) via Submission (Heel Hook) in 3:58 of round 1
2011-04-08: W vs. [#217MW] Aung La Nsang (13-8-0) via KO (Punch) in 1:37 of round 3

Last 3 Fights: Kelvin Gastelum (3-0-0)
2012-07-20: W vs. [NA] Mike Ashford (3-5-0) via TKO (Punches) in 1:57 of round 1
2012-07-07: W vs. [#778MW] Bill Smallwood (1-3-0) via Submission (Rear Naked Choke) in 0:55 of round 1
2011-10-22: W vs. [NA] Mike Gentile (0-1-0) via TKO (Punches) in 2:32 of round 2

Days Since Last Pro Fight: Uriah Hall 302, Kelvin Gastelum 267
Previous Match-up Record: No previous match-ups.
Wins Against Common Opposition: No common opposition or both are winless against common opposition.
.

Women Bantamweight (135)
[#2/#10DD] Miesha Tate (13-3-0, -102) vs. [#6] Cat Zingano (7-0-0, -125)
Miesha Tate is the All-Time #10 ranked Women’s fighter.

Last 3 Fights: Miesha Tate (2-1-0)
2012-08-18: W vs. [#17BW] Julie Kedzie (16-11-0) via Submission (Armbar) in 3:28 of round 3
2012-03-03: L vs. [#1BW/#1DD] Ronda Rousey (7-0-0) via Submission (Armbar) in 4:27 of round 1
2011-07-30: W vs. [#1FW/#2DD] Marloes Coenen (21-5-0) via Submission (Arm Triangle Choke) in 3:03 of round 4

Last 3 Fights: Cat Zingano (3-0-0)
2012-10-06: W vs. [#24BW] Raquel Pennington (3-3-0) via Submission (Rear Naked Choke) in 3:32 of round 2
2011-05-14: W vs. [#10FLY] Takayo Hashi (14-4-0) via KO (Slam) in 4:42 of round 3
2010-12-10: W vs. [#22FLY] Carina Damm (17-8-0) via TKO (Punches and Elbows) in 3:37 of round 2

Days Since Last Pro Fight: Miesha Tate 238, Cat Zingano 189
Previous Match-up Record: No previous match-ups.
Wins Against Common Opposition: No common opposition or both are winless against common opposition.
.
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UFC on FuelTV 9 / Odds vs. Ratings (04-06-2013)

Posted on April 3, 2013 by Jason

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:

System inability to project the exact effects of a recent divisional change.
System inability to project the exact effects of recent inactivity or short notice scheduling.
Poor matchmaking / limited careers / “changing of the guard”.
Notable home advantage.
System inability to project style differences.
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 (except for when Leonard Garcia is involved for #6) — of which I’m sure there will be plenty.

The gotchas aren’t necessarily comprehensive, but I have noted them as I come across them and when they are considered in the decision.

Having said all that, let’s get started:

Ratings vs. Odds

Fight	Odds Favorite	Rating Favorite	I’d bet on	“Gotchas”
Abedi vs. Yousef	Abedi (-139 / Very Small)	Abedi (1.59x / Moderate)	Abedi
Lawlor vs. Kuiper	Lawlor (-184 / Moderate)	Lawlor (1.52x / Moderate)	PASS
Alloway vs. LaFlare	LaFlare (-192 / Moderate)	Alloway (1.41x / Small)	PASS	#3
Brimage vs. McGregor	McGregor (-166 / Small)	McGregor (1.06x / Pick ‘Em)	PASS	#1
Amagov vs. Spang	Amagov (-166 / Small)	Amagov (2.41x / Large)	Amagov
Troeng vs. Cella	Troeng (-239 / Moderate)	Troeng (6.90x / Massive)	PASS	#3, #4
Johnson vs. Madadi	Johnson (-232 / Moderate)	Johnson (1.88x / Large)	PASS	#4
Peralta vs. Corassani	Peralta (-357 / Large)	Peralta (3.55x / Massive)	Peralta	#4
Brandao vs. Garza	Brandao (-212 / Moderate)	Garza (1.44x / Small)	Garza
Pickett vs. Easton	Pickett (-160 / Small)	Pickett (1.43x / Small)	PASS
Mitrione vs. De Fries	Mitrione (-328 / Large)	Mitrione (1.67x / Moderate)	De Fries
Pearson vs. Couture	Pearson (-402 / Large)	Pearson (1.08x / Pick ‘Em)	Couture
Mousasi vs. Latifi	Mousasi (-1190 / Massive)	Mousasi (2.58x / Large)	Latifi	#2, #4

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

Favorites to consider: Abedi, Amagov, Peralta

Underdogs to consider:

Latifi over Mousasi – A true shot in the dark, but -1190 is ridiculous territory and Latifi is actually a quality opponent.
De Fries over Mitrione – A very small bet, as we think De Fries is a slight bargain.
Couture over Pearson – Couture is a great bargain and although not favored by the ratings, Pearson is no world beater himself.
Garza over Brandao – All things considered, Garza looks like a decent bet here.

New Feature: Unusual Decisions

Posted on March 13, 2013 by Oleg

We compiled a list of some of the most unusual and controversial decisions in the history of mixed martial arts. This includes most controversial split decisions (with the biggest difference in scores among the judges) and the most lopsided unanimous decisions (with the biggest difference in scores between the two fighters).

http://www.fightmatrix.com/mma-records-stats/unusual-decisions/

Take a look and let us know what you think!

Average Current Ranking of Ranked Fighters by Organization

Posted on February 23, 2013 by Jason

For this statistic, we used the organization that fighters last fought in, unless a fight is scheduled (that we have in our DB). The one thing I did do, is separate the 18 fighters who the UFC recently cut (Fitch group + Nunes and Vieira), into their own category. We left out the StrikeForce fighters who do not have a fight scheduled in the UFC yet.

Minimum of 15 ranked fighters necessary for an organization to be listed — Strawweights and Women excluded:

Avg Rank	% in Top 25	Organization
74.8	35.7%	UFC (excluding recent 18 cuts)
79.3	17.4%	World Series of Fighting
122.2	11.8%	Recent 18 UFC Cuts (17 are ranked)
144	11.8%	Bellator MMA
155.1	13.6%	KSW
158.6	5.6%	Legacy Fighting Championship (Texas)
172.3	0.0%	Resurrection Fighting Alliance
173.2	0.0%	Tachi Palace Fights
173.3	0.0%	Shooto Americas
177.8	0.0%	Maximum Fighting Championship
178.4	2.4%	M-1 Global
183.8	8.8%	Shooto
187.7	5.3%	Ring of Combat
190	0.0%	Showdown Fights
191.1	6.9%	One Fighting Championship
192.9	7.4%	Championship Fighting Alliance
195.4	4.8%	Cage Fury Fighting Championships
201.3	0.0%	Road Fighting Championship
201.9	0.0%	Deep
208.5	2.2%	King of the Cage
209.5	2.3%	Pancrase
210.3	4.8%	Score Fighting Series
212.6	0.0%	British Association of Mixed Martial Arts
216	0.0%	Jungle Fight
218.8	5.6%	Strength and Honor Championship
220.6	0.0%	Cage Warriors Fighting Championship
229.8	0.0%	Classic Entertainment and Sports
233.5	0.0%	ProFC
234	5.3%	Legend Fighting Championship
243.2	0.0%	Xtreme Fighting Championships (Florida)
247.1	0.0%	Aggression Fighting Championship

Stat of the Day: Average ranked height at each weight division (Updated)

Posted on February 19, 2013 by Jason

We did a post back in September, on the Average ranked height at each weight division.

It’s probably “too soon” to start tracking trends, but I thought I would give it a shot, to see if the UFC’s involvement of smaller divisions is causing them to get “bigger”. We will also add in the new Strawweight division.

Division	Height	Top 50	Diff	Top 50 Diff from 9/12	Tallest/Shortest
Heavyweight+	6’2.0″	6’3.0″	+1.0″	+0.2″	7’0″ – [#10] Stefan Struve 5’9″ – 5 Tied (Monson, Komkin, Brents, Leniu, O. Sanchez)
Light Heavyweight	6’1.1″	6’1.1″	=	-0.4″	6’7″ – [#170] Malik Merad 5’8″ – 4 Tied (Filho, DeAnda, Latifi, Kim)
Middleweight	6’0.0″	6’0.4″	+0.4″	-0.2″	6’6″ – 3 Tied (Grove, Barnatt, Ling) 5’7″ – 5 Tied (Howard, Hernandez, Tapusoa, Martin, Graceffo
Welterweight	5’10.8″	5’11.2″	+0.4″	+0.3″	6’4″ – [#344] Corey Hill 5’5″ – [#390] Lukasz Chlewicki
Lightweight	5’9.4″	5’9.3″	-0.1″	=	6’3″ – [#160] Zorobabel Moreira, [#227] Jose Figueora 5’0″ – [#494] Gilberto Aguilar
Featherweight	5’8.1″	5’7.5″	-0.6″	-0.3″	6’4″ – [#182] Will Chope 5’1″ – [#366] Pablo Veloquio
Bantamweight	5’6.9″	5’6.8″	-0.1″	+0.1″	6’1″ – [#155] Daniel Aguirre, [#187] Patrick Reeves 5’3″ – 3 Tied (Killon, Cavalcante de Oliveira, Ogikubo)
Flyweight	5’5.2″	5’4.8″	-0.4″	-0.2″	5’9″ – [#14] Will Campuzano, [#93] Ricky Calatayud 5’1″ – [#27] Nate Williams
Strawweight*	5’4.7″	5’4.7″	NA	NA	5’8″ – [#1] Mitsuhisa Sunabe, [#5] Mikihito Yamagami 5’2″ – [#2] Rambaa Somdet, [#7] Noboru Tahara

So, it may have been too soon to take a second look at this. Since September, we don’t see much consistent movement either way between the average top 50 height. The most interesting thing in this table is that there is a 5’0″ Lightweight out there!

The Imperfect Science of MMA Fight Data

Posted on January 14, 2013 by Jason

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.