Wednesday, July 11, 2007

UFC More Boring Than Pride? You Decide - A Look at the Numbers


I made some calculations about how bouts end in both The UFC and the ol' Pride. I left out UFC Fight Nights and Pride Bushidos. The UFN are free so who really cares, and the Bushidos were only 2 rounds. I looked at the last 10 events for both orgs from UFC 73 to 64 and Pride 34 to 30 with Shockwave's 06 and 05, FC Absolute, Critical Countdown, and Total Elimination. I didnt include the only draw ( Tito v Rashad ) in the sum of the 180 bouts, and I included Nick Diaz's win over Gomi as a sub. Hey, it's what the fans saw, and that's all that matters really.

UFC:
Total (T)KO - 36 40.5%
Total Subs - 23 25.8%
Total Decs - 30 33.7%
Total Bouts - 89
Average Card: 3-4 KOs, 2 Subs, 3 Dec

Pride:
Total (T)KO - 36 40%
Total Subs - 35 38.9%
Total Decs - 19 21.1%
Total Bouts - 90
Average Card 3-4 KOs, 3-4 Subs, 1-2 Dec

UFC highest numbers in any one night KO/Sub/Dec:
6/3/5
Lowest:
1/1/1

Pride:
Highest:
5/5/5
Lowest:
2/1/0

Modal numbers: ( the most frequently occuring numbers )
UFC: 4/3/3
Pride : 4/4/1

Number of times the UFC had 2 or less of a certain outcome:
2/5/3
Pride:
1/2/7 ( seven out of ten cards had 2 or less dec )

Times bout ending happened zero times in a night:
UFC:
0/0/0
Pride:
0/0/2 ( Two cards had no decisions )

Times there were more or equal decisions than either of the others ( not combined ):
UFC: 4 in 10
Pride: 2 in 10

Times there were more decs than anything else ( combined ):
UFC: 1 ( 69 )
Pride: 0

UFC best of the best: UFC 65 6/1/2, UFC 66 5/3/1
Worst: UFC 69 1/2/5, UFC 73 2/3/4, UFC 67 4/1/4
Pride best of the best: 34 3/5/0, 33 4/4/1, Critical 4/4/1, or Total Elim 4/4/0
Worst: Shockwave 2005 2/5/5 ( still finished more fights than went to dec ).

The numbers are the numbers and I aint gonna spin em. Use your own heads. But at a UFC event your gonna see a whole lot more decisions, 1 in 3, than subs, 1 in 4.
At an old Pride event, you'd see more subs, 2 in 5, than decs, 1 in 5.

Yellow cards anyone?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

i'm not against a good decision,like, IMO, randy vs tim. but too many fighters fight for the decision, or even worse fight "not to lose" or "being scared too lose" call it what you will. But it looks like you definitely spent some time on your numbers.lol pretty much covered every variation

MoreThanUFC said...

Oh yeah, there are times when two fighters do all they can and they just can't finish: Fedor vs Nog or CC, Wandy vs Hunt, Huerta vs Garcia come to mind. Then you have Tito v anyone not named Liddell or Shamrock, Herring/ Obrien, Okami/Franklin ... Too much fighting not to lose instead of fighting to finish. Look at how fucking great the untelevised portion of 73 was. Those guys put it all out, while the main card sucked.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the numbers. There are a lot of possible factors (yellow cards among them) for the discrepancy: Pride's "freakshow" matchups, GPs (where fighters fight more than once a night), the ring vs the cage (more freedom for ground work), and maybe a big one for more submissions in Pride is no vaseline. However, I do agree the #1 factor is fighting not to lose instead of to win.

Anonymous said...

Hi there,

Got to your post via Fight Opinion.

As part of a study I did on decision criteria, I ran numbers on UFC and Pride over a five and a half year period (September 2001-February 2007). Over that span, Pride fights went to decision 32% of the time (137 out of 425) while UFC fights went to decision 29% of the time (112 out of 387).

True, this includes Bushido events, but why are they different than UFC fights? Both are 15 minutes long even if the round numbers are different.

If you're interested in the original piece, you can find it here:

http://www.mmaweekly.com/absolutenm/templates/dailynews.asp?articleid=3434&zoneid=3

MoreThanUFC said...

I'll read the article, sl0, when I have a little more time, but looking at MMA pre-03 to me is pointless now. So mauch has changed: judges being educated, ppv numbers, fan-base, institution of the yellow in pride, etc. I'll chew that one up mentally for awhile and post back.