{"id":18392,"date":"2015-10-21T15:28:46","date_gmt":"2015-10-21T20:28:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/?p=18392"},"modified":"2015-10-22T12:43:35","modified_gmt":"2015-10-22T17:43:35","slug":"the-ufc-is-embracing-analytics-but-are-the-fighters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/the-ufc-is-embracing-analytics-but-are-the-fighters\/","title":{"rendered":"The UFC is embracing analytics, but are the fighters?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Nick Zazulia<\/p>\n

HOUSTON – Hop on UFC.com during any fight and you\u2019ll see live-tracking of strikes, knockdowns, submission attempts and time-in position figures all courtesy of Fight Metric. Log on to a fan forum or reddit\u2019s MMA hub and you\u2019ll find people discussing the statistical edges possessed by their favored fighters. Pop over to Amazon Books and you might purchase Fightnomics: The Hidden Numbers in Mixed Martial Arts and Why There’s No Such Thing as a Fair Fight if you fancy a read.<\/p>\n

It looks like MMA has gone the way of MLB, with teams, managers and athletes spending portions of their training camps examining the results of quantitative analyses to maximize their game plan.<\/p>\n

Look again.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
A shot of UFC.com\u2019s live stat-tracking during the main event of UFC 192 (Nick Zazulia\/Medill)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Cain Velasquez, a 33-year-old heavyweight from Salinas, California, who lost the UFC heavyweight championship title in June and has a still-unscheduled upcoming rematch, said his camp pays no attention to metrics.<\/p>\n

\"Cain<\/a>
Two-time UFC Heavyweight Champion Cain Velasquez (Mike Bacos\/Medill)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

“We just watch a lot of film to pick up on tendencies. We don\u2019t use numbers,\u201d Velasquez said. \u201cI\u2019m a visual learner so if someone tells me something, if I read something, I don\u2019t really get it. My brain doesn\u2019t work that way, so I need to do<\/em> something [to learn it].\u201d<\/p>\n

Fighters aren’t the only ones keeping it traditional, though. Mike Valle is a striking coach who recently broke away from renowned Albuquerque trainer Greg Jackson to start a gym in the Chicago area with wrestling coach Izzy Martinez. Among other fighters, Valle trains 23-year-old Yair Rodriguez, who just won his bout at the Oct. 6 UFC 192 in Houston.<\/p>\n

\"Rodriguez-Hooker<\/a>
Dan Hooker (left) and Chicago’s Yair Rodriguez (right) square off at UFC 192. (Mike Bacos\/Medill)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cDo we use stats? No, no stats really,\u201d Valle said when explaining how they train for fights.<\/p>\n

His team uses a “three ways to win and three ways to lose” approach, in which they identify fighter tendencies and break down relative strengths and weaknesses to give fighters things to plan for.<\/p>\n

\"Mike<\/a>
Chicago-based striking coach Mike Valle, whose pupil Yair Rodriguez competed at UFC 192. (Haydee Clotter\/Medill)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cEverybody does something under pressure,” Valle said. “They go to the right, go to the left, everybody does something. Your opponent, he saw your last fight. You have to be dynamic; you could do the same thing but in a different way.\u201d<\/p>\n

If used, analytics can give an important edge, according to Reed Kuhn.\u00a0 Kuhn is the author of “Fightnomics,” a treatise on analytics in MMA which received endorsements from Greg Jackson (Valle’s mentor) and former UFC fighters and current analysts Chael Sonnen and Kenny Florian.<\/p>\n

Kuhn believes a fighter should fold the metrics in with his traditional methods.<\/p>\n

\u201cUse all of it,\u201d Kuhn said. \u201cKnowledge is power. Analytics can sometimes tell you things that you didn\u2019t expect [after traditional film study.] I am a firm believer that the scientific method with the application of analytics is going to improve your understanding of anything, regardless of the subject matter.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Reed<\/a>
Reed Kuhn, author of “Fightnomics.” (Reed Kuhn\/Courtesy)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Kuhn said that it is hard to quantify, but he has seen what he believes to be a significant impact.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn some cases, it\u2019s very specific where there was a hole or opportunity to exploit in the opponent where the fighter was able to do that, and that was the difference,” Kuhn said. “I\u2019m sitting here reading through [the pre-fight analytics report he prepared for the fighter’s team] bullet by bullet and it sounds like a play-by-play of the fight. So in those cases, at least, I know that I\u2019ve either pegged it very well or the coaches and fighters were very diligent in executing a good game plan.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Tumenov-Jouban<\/a>
Albert Tumenov backs Alan Jouban up to the cage at UFC 192. (Mike Bacos\/Medill)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Kuhn explained that there is increased volatility in the data\u00a0 for combat sports compared to other sports because of the smaller sample size of fights and the looming possibility of a one-punch knockout. But because the volatility is common for everyone, any statistical edge remains valuable<\/p>\n

Kuhn isn’t surprised that UFC and its fans have more readily adopted analytics as part of their process than the fighters themselves. He chalks part of it up to MMA beginning to look more like other sports, and part of it to the fighters themselves.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The cover of “Fightnomics,” Reed Kuhn’s discussion of analytics in mixed martial arts. (Reed Kuhn\/Courtesy)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cA professional \u2018cage-fighter\u2019 is inherently a confident and aggressive person,” Kuhn said. “So, tell them that they\u2019re actually deficient in something that they think they excel at, [that their] wrestling game needs some work and they\u2019re like \u2018Shut up, I\u2019ll pin you in two seconds.\u2019 But that\u2019s not the point. The question is, \u2018Can you pin the other guy or can he pin you?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cSo some of these guys ultimately are going into a cage fight and they just don\u2019t think that numbers can help them. But the top guys? Yeah. And the top managers? Absolutely. Because I\u2019ve personally given reports to most of the top coaches in the game.\u201d<\/p>\n

That may change. According to Kuhn, it had better. The UFC and its fighters need not look very far for cautionary tale about refusing to evolve.<\/p>\n

“Boxing hasn\u2019t really changed in 100 years,” Kuhn said. “I don\u2019t think any sport can afford to just not change in 100 years.”<\/p>\n

Photo at top: Alexander Gustafsson lands a knee on Daniel Cormier en route to a loss in UFC 192’s main event. (Mike Bacos\/Medill)<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Nick Zazulia HOUSTON – Hop on UFC.com during any fight and you\u2019ll see live-tracking of strikes, knockdowns, submission attempts and time-in position figures all courtesy of Fight Metric. Log on to a fan forum or reddit\u2019s MMA hub and you\u2019ll find people discussing the statistical edges possessed by their favored fighters. Pop over to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":162,"featured_media":18410,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[452,509,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-beyond-chicago","category-fall-2015","category-sports"],"yoast_head":"\nThe UFC is embracing analytics, but are the fighters? - Medill Reports Chicago<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/the-ufc-is-embracing-analytics-but-are-the-fighters\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The UFC is embracing analytics, but are the fighters? - Medill Reports Chicago\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By Nick Zazulia HOUSTON – Hop on UFC.com during any fight and you\u2019ll see live-tracking of strikes, knockdowns, submission attempts and time-in position figures all courtesy of Fight Metric. 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