Worst Title Fight Ever? Check the Numbers

FightMetric — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 22:25:52 -0000

Promoted to the front page from the FanPosts by Luke Thomas.

Having a historical database of statistics is nice because it allows you to answer the question: In the grand scheme of things, how bad was the Silva-Leites fight? Was it just a little bad, historically bad, or the worst title fight of all time? To answer this question, we're going to analyze three different statistics:

Total "Events": An "event" in this case means anything that happens in a fight no matter how trivial. This includes every strike attempt, no matter how small, and also has all takedown attempts, standups, position changes, and submissions. A fight with a low total number of "events" would be one where the guys just stood around for a while.

Total Significant "Events": This number takes away all the low-value strike attempts (like the tiny jabs in the clinch and on the ground) and all defensive grappling actions. A fight with a low number of significant events probably meant a lot of time stalling in the clinch or a lay-and-pray situtation where only little shots were thrown.

Significant Strikes Landed: This is the total number of high-value strikes landed. If you don’t care much about activity and only care about watching two guys wail on each other, this is the measure for you.

The four title fights that we'll be looking at are Silva-Leites, Arlovski-Sylvia III, Pulver-Hallman, and Ortiz-Matyushenko. The numbers you see will be the combined totals for both fighters in the match.

Total "Events"

Silva-Leites: 236

Pulver-Hallman: 247

Ortiz-Matyushenko: 420

Arlovski-Sylvia III: 594

To start, we see that the title fight last night had the lowest total activity of any five-round decision in UFC history. To get an idea for how low 236 total events is, consider that 236 over 25 minutes means less than 10 events per minute. Average that across both fighters and it's less than 5 events per minute per fighter. That means that if you spaced these events evenly over the course of the fight, for every one thing a fighter did (no matter how small), you'd have to wait about 12 more seconds before he did anything again.

Total Significant "Events"

Ortiz-Matyushenko: 107

Pulver-Hallman: 123
Silva-Leites: 176

Arlovski-Sylvia III: 588

The thing about last night's fight was that there wasn't a lot of hugging or laying. When either fighter threw something, it tended to be significant, even if just a leg kick. If you want to see two guys do nothing major to each other for nearly a half-hour, watch Ortiz-Matyushenko, where you'd have to wait more than 35 seconds between significant events, if they were spaced evenly.

Significant Strikes Landed

Ortiz-Matyushenko: 40

Pulver-Hallman: 41

Silva-Leites: 92
Arlovski-Sylvia III: 160

The question here is whether to consider leg kicks as significant or not. We are counting them in this number, but if you eliminate them, then Silva-Leites drops to just 45 significant strikes landed, much closer to the top two.

Conclusion

First, it seems that Arlovski-Sylvia III gets a bad rap. It was derided at the time, but probably because most fans couldn't remember back to UFC 33, which got the double dose or Ortiz-Matyushenko AND Pulver-Hallman. By any measure here, Arlovski and Sylvia put on a barn-burner compared to the other three.

The deciding factor for the worst title fight comes down to which you dislike more: watching a bunch of boring stuff or watching not much stuff at all. If it's the former, then Ortiz-Matyushenko comes in as the worst because, while a lot of things happened, very few of them were worth caring about. If it's the latter, then Silva-Leites is worst because less stuff of any kind happened at all.

In the end, our money is on the hybrid approach, in which case we have to give the nod to Pulver-Hallman, which had nearly as little total activity as Silva-Leites, and had nearly as little significant activity as Ortiz-Matyushenko.

What do you think?

What Everyone Gets Wrong about Live Show Attendance

FightMetric — Wed, 14 May 2008 15:00:37 -0000

This is a guest post by Rami Genauer, Creator and Editor of FightMetric.com.

A recent poll conducted by MMA Junkie produced some numbers that have people talking. Only 49% of respondents said that they had attended a live event in the last year. From what I've read in comments and on other blogs, the immediate reactions are: The market is oversaturated/tickets are too expensive/views are better on TV, so fans just don't want to go to live shows. It seems that people are missing the point of these numbers. The responses were seen as bad for the MMA industry because the implicit assumption is that if only 49% of respondents said they'd attended an event, then all events must be running at 49% crowd capacity.

Here are the problems with the initial question:

1.    It was only asked to "hardcore fans," i.e., those that regularly read an MMA news blog.
2.    It was asked to global audience, whether live MMA exists in their region or not.
3.    It allowed for any event anywhere over the course of 12 months. Could be a UFC, could be a small local show.
4.    It only asked if you had been to "a show," without any indication if someone had been to many shows.

So basically, there can be no conclusions drawn as to health of live shows. They could all be selling out and the answer to this question would still be valid. It does, however, lead to one inexorable conclusion: A significant majority of the people you see at any MMA show are not "hardcore fans." It probably doesn't matter what show or what the attendance is. Those 49% were not concentrated in one event; they were spread out across hundreds of events nation- or worldwide. So on a given night, just a portion of them are in attendance at a given show.

What does this mean: The success or failure of an organization's live gate is based almost entirely on its ability to engage local casual fans. A strategy like Rio Heroes' or BodogFight's - to advertise on all the major MMA blogs - is doomed to fail. I think Strikeforce proved the model a while back with the Frank Shamrock-Cesar Gracie show: local advertising, local advertising, and more local advertising. Unless you are the UFC, you can't rely on fans to travel to Vegas, or Montreal, or Columbus, and pay-per-view is not going to save your show. If you are Affliction, your show will only succeed if you can get regular Afflicton-wearing customers in Southern California interested. The fact that people wear your shirts or "live the Affliction lifestyle" in the Midwest or the South is almost meaningless.

The reality is that the MMA blogosphere is beyond myopic. The echo chamber is so loud, we've convinced ourselves that our numbers are stronger and dollars worth more than they actually are. We are a fraction of a fraction. I'm sure MMA writers feel it on a personal level. Write an article for Yahoo and it gets read by ten times the number of people that would read it on a blog. But on the blog, it attracts ten times more email, comments, and blog links. Which is more satisfying?

Even if this is something we don't like to think about, a business that wants to succeed should never forget this. We, the hardcore community, are the early adopters, the people who lined up to get their iPhone on the first day. But the reason why the iPod is the most successful consumer electronics product of the last decade is not because of the tech geeks, it's because Apple convinced the average salaryman that this was something for him too. So the next time you go to a live show and hear some drunken idiot yell "Get a room" when the fight hits the floor, just remember: He's the one keeping that show in business.

SB Nation User Blog: FightMetric

Worst Title Fight Ever? Check the Numbers

What Everyone Gets Wrong about Live Show Attendance