MMA-ELO

Performance in other sports matters or the NSAC wouldn't have sanctioned Toney vs. Coutoure or Lesnar vs. Mir. Someone with no fighting background starts at 1500 which is the same as someone with a large combat sports background.

What should happen is a measure of predictive ability. So if you do this well in wrestling you are more likely to succeed in MMA therefore you start with 100 more points. World's Strongman Champion doesn't correspond well with MMA but it's better than nothing so you get 5 extra points.

To be truly useful you would have to do elo systems for all other sports. Let's say Mark Hunt was a 2200 in Kick Boxing and let's say that your performance in Kick Boxing corresponds 50% with how you do in MMA. So Mark Hunt starts with 1100(In this system people with no combat experience start with 0).

You could do elo systems for kickboxing, wrestling, boxing, ADCC, etc. You could also generalize like if you're an elite kickboxer you start with more points, etc.

Does beating a 0-0 Pro Kickboxer matter more than beating a 0-0 guy? Yes. The ranking system should reflect that.

There are a few possible problems with that.

The first is that a fighter's previous experience might not actually matter during the fight. If a world class kickboxer gets into the ring and "hug and hope'd" for 15 minutes it's pretty minor. Much like a wrestler that gets hit in the face before attempting a single takedown.

There's no doubt that not all 1500 rated first time fighters are even. However, not all humans are equal. Do we penalize Roy Nelson for being fatter than some want in his first fight? Do we give Pudge an advantage due to strength? What about reach. A 5'10" fighter with 78" reach certainly has an advantage over a 5'10" fighter with 73" of reach.

Another problem is that you allow outside points to cross over. Unless you were going to extended a system across boxing/abudabi/k-1/etc and try to track everything it'd be very easy for fighters to gain rank in one "sport" and drop them elsewhere. If you lowered the amount the effect could be lessened.

What it really comes down to though is how big of an advantage would it be system wise? The system corrects itself very quickly and after just a few fights the initial +/- a fighter started with will have mostly faded into their actual career. I'm not sure having a potentially better rating for a fighter's first couple fights is worth the problems and risks of trying to predict the carry over from previous experience.

Well, one could make the argument that different MMA rules and regulations already make for a different sport across promotions. For example, PRIDE rules allowing the gi or Shooto rules.

I would love to see that done somewhere if not here. K1 would be easy to track, as would their copromotions. But results elsewhere would be hard to come by if you wanted to dig really deep. It would be cool to see where a semmy ranks next to a remy in elo.