MMA Ranking Talk

It’s been awhile since my last rant, so I now present you the new super-ultra-mega-rant-3000. Feel free to skim for headings of interest, or just read the whole thing to earn 10 extra evil points.

I’m going to talk about recent events, not dumb black/white US shit kind of recent events, but actual recent MMA events. I’ll also discuss a big UFC myth, delve into the UFC business model a bit, and talk about how the mma-elo.com system reacts to new fighters. If this interests you at all then read on, if not, make a suggestion for next week! 8P

Data Update

Lots of fighter and event information was updated on the 23rd. I have also received some e-mails and seen some forum posts regarding some inaccurate fighter information, I’ll be updating it as soon as I can. If you know of any other wrong fight(er) information, please let me know. I do my best to check it all and remove a lot of obviously flawed information I find, but some obviously gets through.

Dream 10

Shinya Aoki – Back at #1 in the lightweight division. I really need to write a career By The Numbers for this guy because I don’t understand how more fans don’t “get” him. Here’s a few random things:

- 21 wins only 4 losses
- Sexy pants
- Wins over JZ, Hellboy, Alvarez and now Shaolin
- Sexy Pants

Seriously, if you haven’t seen him fight and haven’t seen some of the people he’s beaten fight you should look around. He’s a solid fighter with solid wins against other solid fighters.

Paulo Filho – Yes he’s top 10. Honestly, the “last fight matters more than everything else combined” mentality just doesn’t work for MMA. The guy started his career by winning sixteen fights in a row (almost half by Submission). He loses one fight, where he looks completely out of it, and suddenly people act like he’s a bum. I’m not saying he’ll win his next 10 in a row or that he’s going to beat Anderson, but could we please give this guy some respect and congratulate him on coming back from what was obviously a difficult point in his life.

Melvin Manhoef – I know he lost, but kind of like Shinya above, how do people not get this guy? In 29 fights he has *TWENTY-TWO* (T)KOs. The only decision of his career was over 4 years ago at this point. Again, I make no claims about him going 10-0 in his next 10, and some will question his ground game (I’ll cover this and the retarded ‘glass chin’ propaganda in a future rant), but I can’t imagine anyone not enjoying watching him fight. If you are new to MMA and like strikers, big KOs, seriously, check out some of this guys highlights (and by highlights I mean almost any random fight he’s had).

FFI – Ultimate Chaos

The fight I want to mention briefly from this event was the Bob Sapp Vs. Bobby Lashley fight. Going into the fight Bob Sapp was 10-4-1, Bobby Lashley was only 3-0. Despite only having three fights though and despite Sapp having a very respectable record, Lashley was still ranked higher.

I point this out because one of the complaints I sometimes see is that fighters need to compete 40 times, or that fighting a bunch of cans pads a guys record. That simply isn’t the case though. If you fight and win, you will go up. The better the competition the faster it will happen, but it’s not like the system in place requires 4 years of constant title defenses to crack the top 25 (more on this later).

Sub Rant 1 – New Fighters

I want to take a bit to discuss “new” fighters and how they rise up the rankings. As I mentioned some people think it takes 4 years of defending the title or 8 years fighting, blah blah blah to get a high rating/ranking. That simply isn’t true. Examples tend to help some people, so lets just jump in:

Cain Velasquez – He’s 6-0 and currently top 20 at heavyweight. He’s moved past fighters like Kongo, and even Mir due to their recent performances. I know some are eager to throw guys into the top 10 right away, but sitting top 20 just 6 fights into your career isn’t a bad spot. A win against Carwin and he’ll move even higher.

Jon Jones – He’s sitting top 20 in the “stacked” light heavyweight division. Not too shabby for a fighter who’s first fight ever was in April of *LAST YEAR*. That’s right in the short span of roughly 15 months Jon went from never having a professional fight to being top 20 in a highly competitive division.

There’s no telling if his rise will continue, but another win would likely put him top 15 and another would certainly put him top 10. That seems like a pretty impressive rise over a fairly short period of time.

Brock Lesnar – Brock is the focus of a lot of debate, but lets take a look at what he’s actually done. He is currently 4-1 in his young MMA career, but lets dig a bit deeper.

One thing people don’t often mention is that Brock is not an active fighter. On average fighters compete 3 times a year. Brock fought once in the last 6 months of 2007, 3 times (good) in 2008, and thus far only once in the first half of 2009. Depending on which way you like to do percentages that means Brock has only competed about 80% as much as you would normally expect. At this point in his career that amounts to at least one more fight, and that’s a big difference, especially early in a fighter’s career. I’m not saying he should be Jon Jones and fighting 9 times in 15 months, but there’s no doubt that if he’d fought one more time in 2007 and another time in 2009 he’d be higher (as long as he won of course).

That last point actually brings us to this point. Brock *LOST*. Whether you want to talk about a bad stand up, talk about inexperience or whatever the fact is he lost. If Brock Lesnar had simply won that first fight against Mir he’d likely be in the Top 15 right now at heavyweight. That’s a pretty big jump, but again it’s early in his career.

Rameau Thierry Sokoudjou – First of all, yes I copy/pasted his name lol. Second of all, the reason I bring him up is in response to a comment someone made in regards to Brock along the lines of, “who else has done more in their first 5 fights”. I don’t recall who, or the exact quote (I read a lot and I forget most of it sadly), but you get the gist of it I’m sure. I’m not going to claim Sok did more in his first five fights, but lets take a closer look.

Five fights into his career “Sok” was 4-1 (remind you of anyone?) and had just won 2 in a row against two Top 10 fighters. At this point some ranking sites (ok almost all except for this one) immediately threw “Sok” into the Top 10 (some even did it after his first big win when he was 3-1). What happened in his next fight? He lost to a Machida.

What makes the loss even more interesting to me is where both fighters stood in the rankings going into the fight. On this site Machida was clearly ranked higher even with Sok’s recent big wins. Most other places didn’t even have Machida listed. I could probably dig up some old e-mails from when people were asking me who this Lyoto guy is and why I’m riding his nuts so hard. Honestly, lots of people at the time still had no idea who he was and didn’t think he should be ranked as high as he was on this site at the time. *shrugs*

Fedor Emelianenko – I know it might seem odd having Fedor in this “new fighter” section, but I want to clear up some myths. One of the things people have said is that the site caters to Fedor and that he’s stayed number 1 and won’t lose it and blah blah blah. What the people miss is that Fedor did *NOT* start at number 1. In fact, if we look back historically Fedor was probably ranked *LOWER* than many would have wanted at certain points.

Fedor was 10-1 going into his fight with Heath Herring. That one loss is obviously debated, but again, Fedor did suffer for it. At the time of the Herring fight many had Herring the favorite. If you’ve never watched this fight, I strongly recommend it. Not just for the fight itself, but for the commentary. It’s very easy these days to be jaded about a fighter you’ve seen dominate, but listening to the commentary on the Herring and first Nog fight really helps put things into perspective.

Anyway, going into the fight, Fedor was 10-1 and many considered Herring the favorite. I’ll admit that Fedor was actually ranked higher here (sorry, we just get it right more than people admit lol), but it was close. The fight wasn’t so close, but again the perspective and frame of reference from the fight is what’s really important.

Following that fight Fedor was 11-1 and *LOWER RANKED* than Big Nog. Being ranked lower than Nog at this point probably isn’t a surprise, but as we know, Fedor went on to win the fight. What some might not realize is that following that win Fedor and Nog fought pretty different competition. Fedor’s biggest wins between the first and second Nog fight were Coleman and probably Randleman. He also fought Yuji (Must click if you don’t know him lol) at this point.

Meanwhile, Nog was fighting Cro Cop, Sergei, Ricco, etc. Due to this Nog was actually ranked above Fedor going into their second fight as well! It’s something that makes sense if you think about it, but it is often overlooked. Right now many seem to freak out that Fedor is ranked so high and that is he so highly regarded, but the truth is that just wasn’t always the case. Fedor wasn’t locked into the #1 spot after his first five fights, and he wasn’t even there after his first 20.

Some will look back and think it was blasphemous, but it’s how it works. The system here is a bit slower because the truth is MMA is a bit slower than some make it out to be. There’s no doubt matchmaking, upsets, and timing will lead to some questionable points in time, but overall it works incredibly well.

What I really want people to see is that there is no set bias against Brock or Cain or anyone. Just like there was no set bias for or against Fedor back then. If Brock keeps winning he’ll be at the top in no time (as will anyone), but let’s see what actually happens. He could get injured, lose focus, burn out like many a fighter before him or any other number of things. If Brock does go on to win his next 26 in a row though and sits at 30-1 having beaten everyone 5 years from now,how would you feel when some up-and-comer beats 2 top 20 fighters, sports a 4-1 record and many start clamoring that this new guy is better?

Sub Rant 2 (yes there’s more) – Myth UFC has all the best fighters

As I said, I haven’t gotten to rant in awhile so let me clear my throat.

There is a myth that constantly gets lobbed around that the UFC “has all the best fighters”. That is simply untrue. There are also variations of the myth such as:

- Now that affliction is gone, the UFC can get all the best fighters
- The UFC is like the NFL, it’ll have all the best fighters

All of these things are simply false. I know, some don’t want to hear it, some doth protest, blah blah blah. It is true that the UFC has “a lot” of the best fighters. I think many would even accept that right now the UFC has “the majority of the best fighters”. However, the position that UFC has, or will have *ALL* of the best fighters is simply false.

“But Evil Pooh”, I hear you saying, “How can you say such things!?” Because they are true, that’s why. Let me take a minute and use my patented combination of: Logic, math, historical knowledge, and common sense to address this issue.

Math First

Lets make the assumption that by “best” people mean Top 10. It’s a bit of a stretch from a logical point of view, but it seems close enough to the expected answer to continue on with. Now lets say that all the UFC has is: Heavyweight, Light heavyweight, Middleweight, Welterweight, and Lightweight. Note that we are ignoring Women’s MMA entirely, Featherweight, and Bantamweight in this case. That already skews things in favor of the UFC having “All” the best fighters. I mean, we are ignoring 2 of the current 7 divisions *AND* an entire gender of athlete. *shrugs*

Now some fuzzy math (no bear jokes please), assuming “top 10″ per division, and 5 divisions that means we have 50 fighters. With an average of 3 fights per year for each fighter that means 150 fighter appearances a year. Obviously the results will shift who’s Top 10, but we’ll ignore that for now as well.

The UFC averages one PPV a month (12 in 2008, 8 so far in 2009). If we divide the 150 fighters slots among those 12 events we see 12.5. That means each of the 12 PPVs a year would have to feature 12 (we’ll round down) of the “best” fighters.

A typical PPV contains 10 fights (sometimes a bit more, but 10 is close and an easy number to work with). However, we never get to see all of those fights. A more common number of televised fights per event is in the 5-7 range. That means if we match up the 12 “best” fighters against each other for 6 of the matches we only have room for one(ish) fights involving non-top 10 people per televised portion of the card, and only 4(ish) fights available per card for non-top 10 fighters. Remember though that is if the fights are Head to Head. We could just have 12 fights with one of the “best” fighters competing against one of the “non-best” fighters. What it really boils down to though is that we need to see some combination of 12 of the “Best” fighters in the world per card.

History time

Lets take a look back at some recent UFC cards:

UFC 100 – Let’s call Brock Top 10 and Mir top 10 for the sake of this discussion (it was the main event lol). That’s 2, Now we have GSP Vs Alves, Definitely Top 10 Vs Top 10 (#1 vs #2 at the time really). Third fight…Henderson Vs. Bisping. Henderson, definitely Top 10, Bisping…Sure, we’ve hedge in that direction, +1 Bisping as top 10. 4th Fight…Fitch is probably the next highest rated fighter on the card, but is Thiago really one of the “best” fighters? I’ll give fitch bringing it to 7, but Paulo is pushing it.

Other names on the card are: Jon Jones, Mark Coleman, Bonnar, Jake O’brien, TJ Grant, Matt Grice, Mac Danzig, etc.

Honestly if any of those guys scream “Top 10″ to you or “best fighter in the world”, please add them to the tally you are doing in your head. For me, I’ll go with 7.

UFC 99 – Boy what a drop off…Let’s see…

1) Franklin – I don’t think any would argue this
2) axeSilva – Some actually argue this now, but I’m still willing to give it to him
3) Cro Cop – Some argue it, but again, I’ll hedge in that direction
4) Swick – Some will argue, but I’m casting my vote for him
5) Hardy – Most don’t think so, but he’s a bit underrated, and I’m trying to be generous here
6) Davis – Liked more than Hardy, not sure many would put him top 10, but sure
7) ??? – Kongo, Cain, Fisher, Uno, etc. some good fighters, some “great” fighters, but I’m really not sure you are going to see universal “top 10″ for them, especially at the time of the fight. Either way, adjust your tally accordingly. For me, I’m at 6, with 7 from the first event we looked at.

Actually, lets just stop right here. 6 + 7 = 13. We said we needed 12 fighters per card, that’s 24 across 2 cards, and here after 2 cards we see 13. We are just over half of what we need looking at two events and including the “stacked” UFC 100 card.

Let’s shift to the lighting round real fast…

UFC 98
- Hughes, Sherk, Machida, Evans…Possible Edgar, Sonnen, Miller?, some might say Serra?

UFC 97
- Liddell, Shogun, Anderson…Leites? Kang? Cane? Kongo?

I think you get my point. The cards have *SOME* of the “best” fighters, they have some “great” fighters, and a mix of good and not-so-good fighters. There is *NOTHING* wrong with that. What there is something wrong with is this mentality that every fighter in the UFC on every card is categorically better than any other fighter you’ll see anywhere else on any other card. Again, the UFC card might even average more of the very best fighters in the world, but it still doesn’t have “all” of them.

Back to Math!

There is a good reason you don’t see 12 of the 50 best fighters on every UFC card, know what it is? *MONEY*. That’s right, money. It isn’t fiscally sound for the UFC to put that much work into a card in terms of their return on investment. Let’s build our own card real fast and apply some more fuzzy math…we start off assuming no card, which means no PPV buys.

Match 1) Anderson Silva Vs GSP *BOOM* Big fight, two of the best in the world, huge story, *BIG* buys.

We just made the single biggest *MARGINAL GAIN POSSIBLE*. By adding this one fight we went from no views, to let’s say 1 million views.

Match 2) Anyone else you want Vs. Anyone else you want. *little boom* Don’t get me wrong, this can be an amazing fight, it can be Brock Vs Fedor, it can be Randy Vs Fedor, it can be BJ Penn Vs Brock, whatever. The fact is the second fight on the card, no matter how good will *NOT* have the same return as the first fight on the card.

In the example above we said the first fight put us at 1million buys. The second will *NOT* put us up to 2 million buys. There is just no way there are 1 million people that will buy a UFC event for whatever our second fight is that would not have purchased the event without the fight.

Now understand, it doesn’t matter if you make Brock Vs Fedor the first fight, or GSP Vs Anderson the second fight or 4th fight. The point is the “biggest” fight on the card, is what will generate the most buys. The fights after that might tack on a few more buys, but you basically hit a point where you aren’t really getting that many more people.

Imagine a card like:
- Brock Vs Fedor
- Randy Vs BJ
- Vitor Vs Anderson
- GSP Vs Forrest
- Evans Vs Rampage

There are 5 fights, some highly rated, some just me stretching for examples, but you get the point. If you remove one of those fights the PPV number is going to be very similar. In fact, you could drop any two of those fights, put them on a *DIFFERENT* PPV and likely increase the combined amount of PPV sales between the two events.

Know what else you’d do by moving some of those fights? That’s right! You’d *LOWER THE COST OF THE CARD*. If Evans and Rampage both get 100,000 a fight, and you take them off the card and replace them with a pair of $5,000 a fight local or up-and-coming fighters you just increased your profits tremendously.

Understand that this isn’t “bad”, it’s actually good business. It’s “bad” for the sport obviously because we’d like to see all of those fights, and then 5 more awesome fights the next card, etc. but that simply won’t happen.

History Again…not as good as math, but oh well

What you’ll see if you look at most UFC events is 1 or 2 “great” fights, usually a 3rd “solid” fight, and then a hodge podge. That is the trick to help keep the fighter pay/profits in line. With a couple solid fights they guarantee they get a large % of the PPV buys they’d get even with the most stacked of cards, they greatly reduce their expenses, and they actually *GAIN* from the undercard. The fighters on the undercard could have great fights, provide highlight footage, grow into a bigger star (while still making crap for money on a contract they signed 2 years ago), etc. Often times the UFC is able to put some local names onto the undercard to increase the gate, and since the names aren’t seen on the PPV it has no negative impact there. Literally a win/win situation.

Back to Math, stay with me

Even though this model works incredibly well from a business standpoint, it does sacrifice from the sport standpoint. With a realistic amount of 6 fighter appearances per PPV, and 12 PPV a year that’s only 72 fighter appearances available for the “best” fighters. If we go so far as to include a main event from 6 “fight night” type of events, that’s 12 more slots, but we are only at 84 at that point.

If we divide those 84 appearances between 5 weight classes we get about 16 fighter appearances a year between each weight class. At 3 fights a year that is only 5 fighters we can support.

Common Sense

Given all of the information above I think it’s obvious what does happen and what will happen. The UFC will employ 6(ish) “great” fighters each PPV, they will keep their payroll sound, they will hype fighters, use the undercard to secure a greater ROI, and trim fight appearances for certain fighters.

Remember above how we said Brock has only fought once so far this year. Cro Cop went on record saying he wanted to fight a lot more, but the UFC kept wanting him to wait. At one point Matt Hughes was talking about how he would like to fight six times a year. Anderson Silva constantly talks about staying busy and wanting to get back in the ring.

The truth of the matter though is that the UFC already lacks the capacity to support the competitive appetite of these fighters. With the salaries some MMA fighters have begun to command, there is a large conflict between the current UFC business model and what the fighters (and likely fans) would like to see.

Kinda Crazy, huh?

Think about this. Cro Cop, Anderson, Hughes, Forrest, Brock, Randy, GSP, Chuck, etc, etc, etc. All want to compete, but there isn’t room in the current UFC model to feed their competitive hunger. Chuck Liddell is not the marketable fighter he used to be, but he’s highly paid, and a true competitor. Does it really make sense for the UFC to keep him on? He can’t really “headline” a card at this point, and they only really have 6(ish) slots available to use. Is it worth paying Chuck as much as he wants to be the underdog in the 3rd fight of the night? Not likely, and that’s where the conflict arises.

If Chuck were making $20,000 a fight, then you’d probably see him fight more. Same goes for some other fighters. You just hit a point where you have “enough” of the best fighters, and you can create the matches (and hype) from there that people will still pay to see.

One more thing

All of the above ignores another reason the UFC will not have “all” the best fighters. Some fighters don’t want to fight there. I know people think it’s crazy, I know some cling to the money issues, but there’s a lot more to it than that.

Fedor – He gets the most publicity for obvious reasons, but he’s avoided going to the UFC for awhile. He might end up there, but offering a 20% raise is *NOT* what will do it.

Gegard – Talks about going to the UFC, but he has other interests. He has done K-1, some boxing, he fights in other organizations and keeps a *BUSY* schedule. Take a look at his career he fought *SIX* times in 2008. He’s fought once in May, had a fight in August scheduled against Renato, and is back in Dream to fight after that. Remember that competitive hunger thing I mentioned? Gegard is going to likely have to go from competing in multiple sports, and 4-6 times a year in MMA to likely twice a year in MMA and that is it. It might be more than he is willing to give up, at least at this point.

Hellboy – When Pride was gone his contract was in limbo and his quote was basically, “I’d rather fight for free…” Yeah, doesn’t seem like money is the answer there, and also seems like a very good fighter that is elsewhere.

All of these examples ignore many other great fighters that simply aren’t in the UFC already. Pride folded, and the UFC didn’t pick up Lil Nog. That’s a 17-3 fighter who’s only loses are the flash KO to Sok, a loss to Shogun, and a lose awhile ago to the Janitor. Many considered him one of the “best” fighters in the world, obviously he didn’t wind up there.

Eddie Alvarez – Great fighter, very liked, fun to watch, blah blah blah. Now apparently signed to a longer(ish) term deal with a promotion that is *NOT* the UFC.

There are many other examples and you will see more. Some great fighters will leave the UFC, some up and comers will never get there. I know some think the money will do it, but there is more to it than that. I assure you if the Oakland Raiders had told Bo he couldn’t play baseball, he would have signed with a different team. Whether it be location, fight schedule, requirements, compensation or whatever, the truth is there are many valid reasons some fighters will simply not be in the UFC.

Don’t get me wrong

I know some are up in arms and nerdraging away over this, so let me be clear. This is *NOT* a bash on the UFC. From a financial point of view, their approach works. They lost 40 million plus trying to make it work and it finally has.

What this is about is misinformation and false hope though. Understand that UFC has had numerous opportunities to guarantee that they have “all the best” fighters, but it simply hasn’t happened. As you can see from the above it also isn’t likely to happen. Do I blame them? Heck no, just like I don’t blame the patriots for not signing AP, Fitzy, and every other all-pro player.

Know what though? After the patriots game is done, I’m going to switch channels and watch another *TEAM* that has AP on it. I’m going to acknowledge that although the Pats are scary good, there are other teams with good players. And you know what else? Sometimes I’m going to watch those other teams. I might even acknowledge that one of the players on that other team is better at their position than the guy currently playing on the Pats…(insert gasps and blasphemy here).

Tags: aoki, fedor, liddell, site, ufc

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 25th, 2009 at 8:40 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.