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'Page Fought "The Law" and "The Law" Won
Or at least that's the conclusion one could draw from the report released today with stats from the fight between Quinton "Rampage" Jackson and Matt Lindland. The FightMetric system gives the fight to Lindland 29-28 for winning rounds one and three.
But that's only half the story. The overall scores for the fight are 159-163, which falls within FightMetric's four-point margin for error. That means the fight overall is a draw, which sounds more than reasonable. While Rampage landed more effective strikes, Lindland stayed busy on the ground and attempted five submissions.
What we're learning over the course of the FightMetric project is that there probably should be many more draws in MMA than are actually called. In many cases, a controversial decision is controversial because the fight really was too close to call. But the ten-point must system makes fools of us all when judges refuse to call 10-10 rounds. Calling a round even carries the stigma of indecision, as if a better judge should have been able to spot the victor, even when there fairly shouldn't be one.
Will this change anytime soon? Probably not. The reason seems clear: A close decision disappoints only the fans that thought the losing fighter won; a draw disappoints almost everyone.
Grove-Tanner and the Phantom Split Decision
The nice thing about a split decision is that it counts just the same as a unanimous decision, a knockout, or a submission. So when a rogue judge gives the fight to your opponent, at least the two correct judges can grant you the win you rightfully deserve. So for Kendall Grove, it's all the same in practicality. It's left to us, the fans, to debate and discuss what happened in the mind of the dissenting judge who gave the fight to Tanner. We've released the stats for Grove vs. Tanner, and the results shouldn't shock anyone but Al Lefkowitz. FightMetric sees all three rounds for Grove, with only the third round conceivably close enough to grant to Tanner. The first round goes to Grove, who outstruck Tanner 16-4. The second round was clearly in favor of Grove, and while the FightMetric system calls the round 10-9, it was pretty close to the threshold after which the round would be called 10-8, as two judges called it. The third round was scored 66-61 for Grove in terms of effectiveness, though after factoring in damage, the score goes up to 73-61. Giving that round to Tanner seems justified.
UFC 85 - Better Late than Never
After a nice break, we've come back and done the stats on the televised fights from UFC 85. Today we have the TPR Report and an updated career report for Matt Hughes reflecting his most recent fight. Come back tomorrow for the full fight report on Thales Leites vs. Nate Marquardt.
To Keep You Busy...
A bunch of new, interesting stuff on the site today:1. The full fight stats for Kimbo Slice vs. James Thompson. As anyone who watched the fight would know, the stats put Thompson ahead by quite a bit at the time of the stoppage. FightMetric had Thompson winning both of the first two rounds, the second one by a wide margin. When the fight ended, Thompson had outpointed Kimbo by more than 100 points.2. The fight report on the fight between Matt Hughes and Renato "Charuto" Verissimo. The controversy about this decision got a rebirth thanks to a column by Josh Gross a little while ago. This is one of those fights for which the stats are pretty inconclusive. With two rounds scored as draws and the extreme rarity by which judges call 10-10 rounds, it's easy to see how this could be scored either way. 3. The career report for Matt Hughes. Or, more accurately, the UFC career report for Matt Hughes. The report contains 18 of Hughes' 19 UFC matches. It doesn't seem like his first match (a decision win over Valeri Ignatov at UFC 22) has any video. While Hughes has looked pretty vulnerable in his last few fights, it's important to remember how dominant he was. Keep an eye out for an analysis of the careers of Hughes and Georges St. Pierre. The UFC likes to describe Hughes as "the most dominant welterweight of all time." No one doubts that he was. Is he still?But that will have to wait. We will be taking a vacation starting tomorrow; no email, no TV, no pay-per-view. So coverage of UFC 85 will be delayed about a week. In the meantime, enjoy!
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