Standard Intro, I’ll make it better later…
One of the things that makes this site different is that it strips out the hype. If Fighter A wins they go up, if they lose they go down. No name recognition, no organizational bias, etc.
What I’ve found over the years though is that some people don’t even realize how biased they are. In an attempt to foster some unbiased thought I figured I’d give this a try. I’m not totally sure how this will go, and I’ll probably change it because I get bored faster than a (*censored whorehouse joke here*).
Here’s how I see it going. I’m going to list totally unbiased, numeric data on two fighters. Active, retired, same weight, different weight, same org, diff org, whatever. Any two fighters. Based on that information you should gauge if they are relatively close, if one is clearly better than the other, whatever “ranking” type of judgment you would normally pass. After that feel free to guess who the fighters are, once you know who they are, did your “ranking” change? If so, why?
As a disclaimer all information is accurate to the best of my knowledge at the time of this rant.
Similarities
Fighter A and Fighter B have the *SAME* number of losses
Fighter A and Fighter B are *BOTH* undefeated in the last 3 years.
Fighter A and Fighter B *BOTH* have the same “finish percentage” (percent of wins not coming via decision)
Fighter A advantage(s)
Fighter A has 10% *MORE* wins than Fighter B
Fighter B advantage(s)
Fighter B has a harder strength of schedule (as measured on this site)
Conclusions?
So, based upon the information above should Fighter A be ranked higher? Fighter B? Are they close?
There were a few other criteria I thought about including, but things get subjective very quickly. I considered adding one/three year mod information, but I’m not sure if that belongs. If there is another “number” you’d like to see included, please let me know. Feel free to just guess who they are, and I’ll toss up the fighter comparison at some point in the future.
Tags: Tossup
hhhmmmm. No idea who they are, but we’ll make a few assumptions and take a stab that Fighter B should be ranked higher due to his higher strength of schedule. Got any clues? Weight class? Top 10?
I wanted to try keeping this as completely numerical and objective as possible. That’s why I don’t include weight class, top 10, title(s), etc.
One thing I thought about including was subs/kos. Fighter A has more subs, Fighter B has more KOs. However, although “finishing” a fight has some actual value, the split seems more likely to lends itself to personal bias.
I thought about including % different in strength of schedule (it’s pretty close), and possibly even 1/3 year mod (Fighter B is higher in both of those categories). Again though, I think those become more inferred things and step away from the pure performance of the fighters in question.
I’m not really expecting an absolute “Fighter A is higher than Fighter B”, but rather a more general expectation of where these fighters stand in the MMA landscape. Is Fighter A a “can”? Is Fighter B “top 10″? Are they “similar”? Do you see something that clearly yells “Fighter A > Fighter B”?
Since this response is now longer than the rant, I’ll just mention briefly(ish) how this all came about. Recently I was talking with some new (very new) MMA fans and they got to talking about “top 10 fighters”. After a little bit I started giving them blind fighter histories and answering honest questions, “Yes title, no different weight class, yes 5 wins in a row, yes never won 4 in a row”, etc.
In many cases I found a fighter they found impressive was one they’d never heard of. In some cases a fighter they were just recently proclaiming as “top 10″ was suddenly not so “unbeatable”. (funny how when you realize a guy has lost 40% of their fights it suddenly becomes harder to proclaim them unbeatable).
Having gone through that, I figured it was worth a try here as well. The problem I have is finding the right criteria that gives enough information to make a solid judgment, but not so much that it skews the results or opens them up to bias.
If there are some universal questions or additional numbers you’d like to see included let me know. I’d like to try this again next week (have a few ideas already), so I can add the information in then.
Well, I was thinking Shane Carwin (A) and Demian Maia (B) until I read that follow-up bit about fighter A having more subs and fighter B having more (T)KOs. Other than that, it matched perfectly
Just realized Maia has one decision…
Ah, OK then… Carwin and Brett Rogers.