Rich Franklin = Nailbiter?
Historically, Rich Franklin is not a fighter you associated with razor-thin decisions. For the better part of his career, Franklin either won big or lost big (thanks to Anderson Silva and Lyoto Machida). The exception to this rule was Franklin's fight against Yushin Okami two years ago. This was a very important fight for him, because a win would get him another crack at the middleweight belt, while a loss would set him back severely. Franklin fought a cautious fight and capitalized on Okami's slow start, just squeaking by for a decision.
Franklin's win over Wanderlei Silva on Saturday night marked his second consecutive close decision. The stats for the fight show a clear victory in Round 1 for Franklin, but then two close rounds that could have gone either way. This, following a coin-flip kind of decision against Dan Henderson, that could have easily been called a draw. Is this Franklin being cautious with his career, facing stiffer competition, or is this kind of fight one that we can expect consistenly from the new Rich Franklin?
Also, check out the stats from Dan Hardy vs. Marcus Davis to see if Davis has a case when he says he didn't lose, and look at the numbers from Cain Velasquez vs. Cheick Kongo to see just how many of those little punches to the head Velasquez landed.
UPDATE: By popular demand, we've added the stats for the fight between Spencer Fisher and Caol Uno.
posted by FightMetric @ 10:22 AM
2 Comments
2 Comments:
I think for Franklin, it's a combination of gameplanning and opponents. In the last 3 years, Franklin has dominated the non-Top 10 opposition he's faced, stopping both Matt Hammill, Travis Lutter, Jason MacDonald inside of 3 rounds. Franklin was a guy that feasted on sub-par competition early in his career, and now he does the best he can to hang tough with elite competition. You can tell against Henderson he was relying on his cardio to take the later rounds, and he capitalized early on Okami's tentativeness, so he seems to be using smart strategy to make the most of his abilities, which at this point seem more "very good" than "elite."
Nice analysis. I was curious if you'd ever create a program to predict fights in the future based off of statistics alone? I'd be interested in seeing how those would work out with pending fights like the UFC 100 cards
Post a Comment
<< Home