MMA Ranking Talk

The Strikeforce card is in the books, and the site is finally updated(a few days late, sorry I’m so slow!). I’m going to discuss a few things from the card and respond to random things from around the web.

Strikeforce – Carano Vs Cyborg

Fight outcomes

Some people are obsessed with fight outcomes as a means of measuring the validity of the system. As I’ve said in the past that is an often flawed approach because the system (and the sport) is much deeper than that.

For those that focus only on direct prediction percentage though, the higher ranked fighter won 8 of the 9 fights on Saturday. In the one fight where the lower ranked fighter won, they are now ranked higher. Doesn’t seem too bad, does it?

I don’t really look at things in those terms though. I see that the case of one fighter “leapfrogging” the other wasn’t because of enforced leapfrogging within the system, but because the fighters were genuinely very evenly matched. That to me speaks to good matchmaking, and to an overall meaningful fight.

Another thing I note is the fight between Melendez and Ishida. It wasn’t that long ago that Ishida beat Melendez and since that win the fighters have both had modest records (2-1 and 3-2). The reason the fight stands out to me is that despite the head-to-head loss previously Melendez was still the higher rated fighter. This makes sense from a logical point of view, from a system point of view, and obviously now from a results point of view.

For some people the sight of a fighter being ranked above someone they’ve directly lost to immediately signals that the site’s system is flawed. These people will complain about Sherk being 11 whole rating points higher than Edgar, yet some of them didn’t mind that Jardine was ranked lower than Forrest. People need to understand that although a direct head-to-head victory has a tremendous impact on where two fighters stand, it does *NOT* immediately invalidate everything else that has happened up to that moment in time.

Note to the Gegard Mousasi bandwagon…YOU’RE LATE!

As with all fighters I’ll say there is no way to know what happens next. Gegard could have peaked and his rating may never go higher. He might get bored, change sports, retire, or continue winning for the next three years. There is really no way to know what will happen in the future.

What we can be relatively sure of though is the past. The fact of the matter is that Gegard has been doing very well for a long time now and most were unwilling to look/listen/think. To hear some people claim Gegard “arrived” by winning a single fight after he won 12 fights in a row, a MW tourney, and jumped weight classes to fight Mark Hunt, just seems silly. There’s no doubt the win over Renato was impressive, but some people obviously should have been paying attention sooner.

Random Answers

As evidenced by the two day late site update, I don’t have a lot of time. I try very hard to answer questions on this site, and even some I get directed to elsewhere. However, your best chance to get a response to an honest question is to post in the forums here or e-mail me. If you genuinely have a question, then I’ll do my best to answer it.

Genuine(ish) Questions
The question of weight classes on the site has come up…again. I’ve responded to this several times in several places, but perhaps it’s time I throw it all together into one big answer. Look for a rant later this week to address why weight classes are handled how they are on this site.

Another question I see raised is that of how unbiased the site is. Let me be clear, the site is only biased towards accuracy. The site is completely unbiased in terms of the fighters themselves and the organizations they fight for. There is nothing that gives Fighter A an inherent advantage over Fighter B. The system evaluates GSP the same way it evaluates Fedor. If you see one fighter with an 1870 rating and another fighter with a 1270 rating you can be certain that if you swapped their fight histories exactly, their ratings would swap as well.

This is very different from some sites where wins mean different things. Sometimes fighters leapfrog, sometimes they don’t, sometimes people move up without ever fighting, sometimes people move down without ever fighting.

I know some like to claim that the site is “biased” based upon the initially selected criteria, but that is simply wrong. To claim it was biased would suggest that I wanted a certain outcome (say, Fighter A ranked highly, or Organization B to have more of the top ranked fighters), I’d then have to re-tune the system variables after almost every fight to ensure that the status quo I wanted was still maintained. Given that the core system variables haven’t changed in quite some time I think it’s safe to say that isn’t the case.

As I said at the top, the system is biased towards accuracy. A rant about system accuracy is on the list (along with a dozen other things), but understand that the values used on the site were chosen because they were the most accurate. By accurate I mean that when the system expects a 60% win%, there is very close to a 60% win percentage. Not that my all-time favorite fighters are cemented at #1 in every weight class and will never move regardless.

In a likely to fail attempt at clarifying the situation lets talk about painting a house. If I were a huge fan of red walls in a house (I had a bias toward the red walls), and was painting the walls of a house and made them red due to my own personal tastes, that would be bias in the sense most understand it. It is a personal bias that is determining how something is done.

The situation here on the site would be akin to me liking red walls, but doing research and knowing that statistically white walls make a house more likely to be sold. Given the intent on selling the house, my “personal bias” is set aside and a decision is made purely based upon supporting evidence.

If people want to get hung up on perceived “bias” they can all they want, but understand that most rational people understand what the term “unbiased” is representing in regards to this site. It means no *PERSONAL* (Evil Pooh) bias, it means no *ORGANIZATION* bias, it means no *FIGHTER* bias, etc. If you want to get hung up on “statistically accurate bias” be my guest, but I pray you have better things to do with your time.

Not so genuine “questions”
Here are a couple comments I’ve seen around the web that were a waste of my time and sadly others I’m sure.

“Elo is basically using MMAth…”

Wow it only took this “author” five words to show they either have no clue what Elo is, or what MMAth is (maybe both *shrugs*). Thank god they are making a comment about…Elo *AND* MMAth!

I’d go into more detail on how wrong this is, but it’s the kind of thing that if I have to explain what’s wrong it’s even worse.

Why I’m Evil Pooh and not Tolerant To Morons Pooh
Another little gem I saw was this “tongue-in-cheek, stick-it-to-the-man, omfg I’m so clever I’m going to jump out of my chair and slam the ’submit’ button as I post this ownage of a response” that said,

“i just like the elo system because it still has jon fitch ranked high, and he never dipped. AND as it stands now fedor is the only top 10 HW that is outside the UFC and signed with SF. so much for more competition outside the UFC”

Let’s step through this pile of shit turd by turd, shall we?

“Jon Fitch ranked high” – is this a problem? What places don’t have Fitch ranked high?

“and he never dipped” – Simply wrong. It takes clicking one link (shockingly titled “Jon Fitch”) to see that he, in fact, did dip. He lost personal rating when he lost to GSP, he also got “passed” in the sense that other fighters’ ratings improved.

It’s important to keep in mind that a fighter’s rating shows where they stand on a personal level, but a fighter’s “ranking” is determined based upon their rating in relation to other people. As I’ve said before, hitting 50 home runs in a year might sound awesome, but it loses a bit of its shine if the league average is 72 home runs.

“as it stands now fedor is the only top 10 HW that is outside the UFC and signed with SF”

I love the effort put in to tailor the response…”outside the UFC *AND* signed with SF”. Yeah because SF is completely against co-promotion and unless someone is signed to SF this very second there’s no chance they could be one of Fedor’s next three opponents.

“so much for more competition outside the UFC”

This is great because it acts as though the previous skewed comment actually proved something. Note that the previous line used “*AND* signed with SF” and this line says “outside the UFC”. Little known fact, those are actually two different things.

Let’s take a quick look at the current MMA-ELO top 10 heavy weights:

1) Fedor – Ok so out of the top 10, we are down to 9 because he won’t fight himself!
2) Josh Barnett – not in the UFC, was scheduled to fight, could still happen
3) Big Nog – In the UFC, but uhhhh no one is asking for this fight. (Nog even turned a 4th fight down at one point previously)
4) Jeff Monson – Available, and can’t leave the US lol
5) Cro Cop – See Nog
6) Antonio Silva – Not UFC, Has fought in EliteXC
7) Aleks – Brother, won’t happen (still not UFC)
8) Arlovski – Not UFC
9) Ben Rothwell – Now UFC, wasn’t UFC before, somehow went from no chance against Fedor to now being mentioned as part of the UFC’s uber HW stable that Fedor has to come prove himself against.
10) Randy Couture – If he wins this might actually get talked about a bit more

So of the “top 10″ HWs, that’s really 9 because of Fedor himself, the UFC has…4. Of those 4 Fedor has already beaten Two. That means *TWO* of the top 10 HW’s are available in the UFC for Fedor that he hasn’t already beaten. Additionally, one of those two hasn’t even fought in the UFC yet and until signing was bashed as being no competition. Amazing how the original statement basically bashed SF for only having 1 of the “top 10″, but for the intent of the message, the UFC is sitting at 2. (It’s ok, my head hurts too)

What is really interesting is the names people do talk about fighting Fedor are Brock, Carwin and Cain. They have ratings of: 1916, 1864, 1797. Compare those against fighters like Werdum (1903), Overeem(1912), Rogers(1903) and suddenly it does look like Fedor actually has some competition outside the UFC. Note the word “some”, not “more”, not “better”, just a very reasonable, a very logical, a very factual, “some”.

Also note that Fedor is signed for three fights in Strikeforce. Lots can change. Carwin and Cain are about to fight each other that means one is likely to gain rating and one likely to go down. Randy and Nog are about to fight. If Randy wins his stock will go up, if he loses then people probably won’t mention him again. Dos Santos has a fight with Cro Cop (Offical?) that could impact things.

Lots can and will happen in the next year or so. In the next year Brock could win three more fights (and almost double his career total!) and that’d move him up the list a lot. Carwin (or Cain) could remain unbeaten and climb the list.

Maybe in a year or so the UFC will have all of the top 5 or 10 fighters, then this person could actually post an honest, straight forward comment to support their personal opinion instead of the previous pile of crap.

Quick Note
It should really be it’s own rant, but your personal opinion should not dictate how “good” the site is. If your favorite fighter moves up to #1 that doesn’t make the site better. If they lose and drop from #1 that doesn’t make the site worse. If the site is wrong, then it needs to be adjusted, and that is true whether you like how the Top 10 currently looks or not.

If BJ beats Sanchez and moves into #1 don’t suddenly flaunt how BJ is #1 on mma-elo if you’ve been bashing the system because he wasn’t #1 before. If the system was flawed to not have him #1 before, then it’s likely still flawed even if he’s now sitting at #1. On the other hand, if you’ve been following the site and understand that Brock is on the rise, and he continues to win. By all means, cheer his career and note his accomplishments.

One of the real strengths of the site is how consistent it is and whether you like the site, love the site or hate the site, I don’t think it’s asking too much that you show a bit of consistency back to it.

Thanks,
-Evil Pooh

Tags: fedor, strikeforce, system, ufc

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 18th, 2009 at 6:51 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.