FightMetric may be synonymous with advanced analysis, but that doesn't mean we are ignoring some of the simpler data out there. The simplest form of analysis that we can do across our database is based on personal characteristics. Does the younger fighter win more often? How much of a height difference is necessary to confer an advantage on the taller fighter? However, there's one piece of physical data that we've found inconsistent and hard to accumulate: reach stats.
Simply put, there's no reliable source of reach information. To start, the UFC (and other organizations) didn't even bother tracking this information until a couple of years ago. To make matters worse, the numbers thrown up on-screen right before UFC fights vary wildly for the same fighter across different fights. For example, Gabriel Gonzaga is listed as having a 72-inch reach in his fight against Mirko Filipovic, but listed with a 77-inch reach in his fight against Kevin Jordan.
Clearly, any study of reach will have to be done with care. Because of the inconsistencies in these numbers, the best way to go about it is to get as many measurements as possible for each fighter. And that's where we'd like to enlist your help for a little experiment in crowdsourcing.
What we need is some volunteers with access to a good UFC DVD library. The UFC began showing reach data starting at UFC 54, so we'll want to look at every fight since that event. If you want to help and have access to video of those events, send an email to info@fightmetric.com listing the events that you'd like to track. We'll keep a running list of the events we still need here:
As we get volunteers, we'll cross the events off that list. Once you've been assigned an event, take down the reach numbers for each fighter on the card and then email the data back. It's a quick and easy and will go a long way toward getting some consistent reach data that can be used to do real analysis. We really appreciate the help.
Note: If you volunteer for an event for which there is a DVD, you are responsible for the data for every fight on that card, not just the televised ones. For Fight Night cards and numbered events that don't yet have a DVD, you would only have to track the fighters that appeared on the broadcast.
