| |
|
 Subscribe in a reader
BJ Penn's Love/Hate Relationship...
...with the UFC Lightweight Championship. The UFC's 155-pound class has had its ups and downs, and it seems like every one of those spikes has involved BJ Penn. Penn was the last man to contend for the title before it was stripped from Jens Pulver, the last man to contend for the title before the weight class went on hiatus, and the first man to contend for the title after it was stripped from Sean Sherk. The fact that Penn failed in his first two attempts to capture the belt still rankles some to this day. His first attempt ended with a rare majority decision loss to Pulver. His fight for the vacant title against Caol Uno ended in an even-rarer draw. Both of these decisions are among the most controversial in UFC history.Today marks the release of FightMetric reports for both Penn fights, against Jens Pulver and against Caol Uno. While the Pulver fight was at least close enough for Pulver to take two rounds, the Uno fight was hardly competitive. Penn takes it 49-46, but has an overall lead of 180 points over Uno.It's imporant to keep in mind that these two fights were contested when MMA judging was still in its relative infancy. At that time, judges were much more like to score a 10-8 or 10-10 round than they are now. As much as folks like to complain about decisions these days, MMA judging in this country has most certainly improved in the last six years.
BJ Penn is Ridiculous
During his banishment from the UFC, BJ Penn was something of a ronin, taking fights where he could face interesting opponents no matter the weight class. Of all of these fights, none is more impressive than Penn, a legitimate lightweight, taking on Lyoto Machida, a legitimate light heavyweight. That's a 50 pound differential.What's probably most impressive is how well Penn did against not just any larger opponent, but a top-tier 205-pounder. Machida took the unanimous decision and is still undefeated two years later.The FightMetric report on the fight between Penn and Machida shows just how well Penn did. For starters, Penn got cracked by several huge shots in the clinch...and was completely unfazed. Though wild with his stand-up striking, he landed more HiPer Strikes than Machida.Using the ten-point must system, FightMetric gives the fight to Penn 29-28. Overall, the effectiveness scores favor Machida 185-183, which is within FightMetric's margin of error. That means Penn effectively got a draw against one of the top five light heavyweights in the world. And when you think about it, that's pretty ridiculous.This report also marks the debut of our new report format. What you'll be seeing in the future is the ability to house complete stats for multiple fights in a single presentation. Currently, only our TPR Reports have the ability to display limited stats for several fights at once. Take a look, give it a test-run and if you have any comments, feel free to send them to us at info@fightmetric.com.
Stay Tuned
Apologies for the lack of updates around here. Within the next few days we will be releasing a brand new report format that should be a major improvement. It will have a different look, but more importantly, it will be more automated and quicker to create. It will also be suitable for any fight, not just ones that go to a decision. All of that means that we'll be able to create reports for more fights, providing more stats for you.
Major System Revision
It has always been our intention that FightMetric be a work-in-progress. From time to time, it becomes necessary to change things, be they detail, rule, or even one of the founding principles. Today, we make our first major revision.The change in question relates to damage. The system, as originally conceived, had four possibilities in the damage category: None, Light, Moderate, and Heavy. Each of the three damage levels had a certain multiplier associated with it, so the fighter's StrikeScore would be augmented based on the level of damage he had inflicted. The reason behind the multiplier (as opposed to a static award for damage) was to give greater reward to those who had struck effectively and give less benefit to those that may have scored a lucky elbow, for instance.The criteria for calling damage light, moderate, and heavy were never all that clear. The general guideline was to look at the number of "things." So one cut was light, two independent cuts were moderate, etc. But there was a lot of leeway to judge things as the scorer saw fit. The subjectivity associated with labeling levels of damage (and thereby awarding different effectiveness scores) was the most widely criticized facet of the FightMetric system. Critics argued that you couldn't rightly call a system objective if this subjective judgment played such a prominent role. After some thought, we are inclined to agree. From now on, damage is a binary decision; it either is or it isn't. So no matter how many "things" there are, it all falls under the "Yes damage" category and will have a single multiplier value. The result will be a smaller potential reward to a fighter who causes a bunch of accumulated damage. This change makes the FightMetric system a little less dynamic, but a lot more objective. That is a sacrifice we are more than happy to make.
UFC 83 TPR Report and Updated Career Reports
The TPR data for UFC 83 is up today, with stats for the six fights on the telecast. In addition, the career reports of Georges St. Pierre and Matt Serra have been updated to include their latest fight.One interesting note: Quarry gets a TPR of 61, proving that it's tough to put in an above-average performance when your opponent won't engage. Starnes' TPR of 24 is not exactly fair. The system awards him 10 points just for surviving to a decision, which is usually something of an accomplishment. Conceivably, if more fighters start using the "Starnes Strategy" we'd have to modify the equation. But we'd probably stop watching the sport before it ever came to that.
Mike Goldberg: FightMetric Mouthpiece?
It's always nice when folks let us know they enjoy our stats, but an even bigger pleasure is knowing that people are using them for their own purposes. We've helped several MMA writers add color to their stories with some stats, and our in-depth fight reports are used (and mis-used) in arguments across countless forums. Veteran UFC announcer Mike Goldberg has used some FightMetric stats on-air in the past, but no mention was more explicit than during the UFC 83 telecast. During the St. Pierre-Serra fight, Goldberg not only used several statistics we published in our article at Yahoo Sports, but immediatebly afterward, he quoted verbatim from the article, labeling St. Pierre, "maybe the best functional wrestler in MMA today." We maintain a liberal attribution policy when it comes to quoting numbers we've made publicly available on this site or others specifically because we want to see the ideas spread even independent of the FightMetric name. Indeed, Goldberg might simply be prohibited from mentioning the name of a site or company that isn't an official UFC sponsor. But given the potential exposure, if you were faced with this situation, what would you feel more of, disappointment or pride?
An Alternate Reality for Matt Serra
It was a championship fight, the most important fight of Matt Serra's career and it was a fight he should have lost. But despite the naysayers, he won, and his life has not been the same since. Matt Serra beat Chris Lytle.
With all the hubbub surrounding his win over Georges St. Pierre, it's easy to forget that Serra was one cranky judge away from quite a different career reality. The judges' scores for the Serra-Lytle fight were peculiar, to say the least. Two of the judges gave the win to Serra 30-27. The other judge gave a 30-27 victory to Lytle. There have been more than 700 fights in Nevada since MMA was regulated in 2001, more than 300 of which have gone to a decision. This is still the only decision in which two judges thought one fighter won every round and the other judge thought that same fighter lost every round.
FightMetric's effectiveness scores agree with Glenn Trowbridge, who gave the fight to Lytle. As you can see in the in-depth report on the fight, FightMetric calls the first two rounds for Lytle, while the third round is 10-10. That means a 30-28 victory for Lytle, who also has the edge in total points 103-72.
The career TPR Report for Serra is similarly uncharitable. TPR doesn't like Serra's style of positional control with occasional bursts of action. In addition, his accuracy scores aren't helped by the fact that he attempts an average of 12 takedowns per fight, but lands only 20% of them. Scoring each of Serra's 10 fights in the UFC, he manages a career average TPR of 53, which in baseball terms would be called "replacement level."
Had one of the others judges given the split decision nod to Lytle, who knows what would have happened to Serra. Would he have dropped back down to 155 like fellow TUF 5 alums Din Thomas and Rich Clementi or would he have stayed at 170, where he would likely be at least two fights away from a title shot? It's not to say that Serra wouldn't have beaten St. Pierre when given the chance, it just might have been a while longer before he got his shot.
|
|
|
|
