'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.

Source:'Page Fought "The Law" and "The Law" Won

Two Years Later – The Ultimate Fighter 4 Report

Thomas Gerbasi, UFC – The Ultimate Fighter series has been the launching pad for some of the game’s rising stars, from Forrest Griffin, Rashad Evans, and Michael Bisping, to recent winners Nate Diaz and Amir Sadollah. But in season four, which premiered in August of 2006, the format of the show changed, as 16 UFC veterans were brought in for one last chance at glory.

Source:Two Years Later – The Ultimate Fighter 4 Report

Don't Forget About Sherk

It’s been all BJ all the time the last couple of weeks here, as we ramped up to UFC 84 with a few detailed reports of his fights. Today marks the release of the career TPR Report for BJ Penn and we have an article up at Yahoo Sports with some really interesting information about BJ’s jiu-jitsu and the way he passes guard.

But don’t think we forgot about Sherk. While the majority of his fights have been in smaller organizations, and thus, do not have readily accessible video, we are doing the best we can to learn what we can about Sherk’s time in the UFC. The first product of that study is released today, a detailed report on his fight with Nick Diaz. This is one of those odd fights where all three judges agree precisely on the scoring, but the fan community is up in arms. As the stats show, the fight was extremely close, nearly a draw. What are the chances that Penn-Sherk is that close?

Source:Don't Forget About Sherk

It's Fedor Week!

In honor of Fedor’s first consequential fight in nearly three years, we’ll be devoting our coverage this week to the career of one of the sport’s all-time greats. We’ll be releasing new stats and analysis every day this week. Here’s the Fedor Week schedule:

Monday: Fedor Emelianenko vs. Semmy Schilt
Tuesday: Fedor Emelianenko vs. Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira I
Wednesday: Fedor Emelianenko vs. Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira III
Thursday: Fedor Emelianenko vs. Mirko “CroCop” Filipovic
Friday: Fedor Emelianenko Career TPR Report

Check out how Fedor fared in his first Pride fight and make sure to come back this week for more Fedor fun.

Source:It's Fedor Week!