UFC Vegas 21, Knowing What to Ignore and High Praise
UFC Vegas 21, Knowing What to Ignore and High Praise
After a crazy busy week around UFC 259 (and at my day job as well), this week’s newsletter is going to be a little shorter than usual.
And it’s only going to contain a little bit of gloating about the Blachowicz by decision call.
Belal Muhammad …
… ranks top-10 among active UFC Welterweights in both total strikes landed () and significant strikes landed (794).
Leon Edwards …
… was only out-landed by 22 significant strikes when he fought Kamaru Usman. That’s the second-lowest margin Usman has out-landed any opponent by in any of his 11 fights that lasted at least 8 minutes. His average in those fights is +45.1.
“A prophet is not someone with special visions, just someone blind to most of what others see.”
This is another Nassim Taleb quote I’m pondering recently. And (surprise!) I think it’s highly applicable to sports betting.
Filtering out noise and identifying what factors in analyzing a fight don’t matter is as important (if not more important) than worrying about what to focus on.
Even after last week’s fight, it’s probably safe to say Israel Adesanya is a better technical striker than Jan Blachowicz. But it turned out, analyzing their striking technique, and trying to figure out just how much more technical Adesanya is would not have helped you much in analyzing that fight.
And in the same way, it proved very valuable to stay blind to Jan Blachowicz’s reputation as a power striker.
If you read last week’s newsletter, you saw that I liked Blachowicz by decision. As I explained on my podcast, this was because I liked Blachowicz to win, but wasn’t buying his new-found reputation as some kind of an Ngannou-lite power striker. By not putting too much weight into a few recent performances, and focusing on the fact that his career knockdown rate is actually below the Light Heavyweight average, we were able to find some value.
No Prop Bet This Week
I’m a little burnt out from the hustle of UFC 259, and with a busy week at work and in my personal life, I just haven’t had time to dive as deeply into UFC Vegas 21 as I’d like, so no long-shot prop bet to offer this week.
The Highest Praise I Could Ask For
This week, three different people have reached out and asked me to stop selling/cautioned me against selling my advanced analytics package. The core of all three messages was the same — there’s a big edge in using stats for MMA betting, if stats become easily accessible that edge might shrink.
“Don’t sell this, it’s too useful” is just about the best testimonial I could ask for.
But that does bring up a legitimate question — if it’s so useful, why make it more accessible when I could just bet and sell people my betting picks instead?
I want stats in MMA to catch up to the rest of sports. Keeping numbers hidden and trying to squeeze out some value while purposely keeping other people in the dark is not how this is going to happen.
The more people that are out there analyzing the data, the more interesting things will come out of it. The more people out there demanding the data, the more data that will eventually be made available.
And I’m not trying to pretend I’m some benevolent saint, either. As demand and interest in MMA stats grows, the interest in stat-driven content grows. And that, of course, is what I do. A rising tide lifts all boats.
If you’re interested in checking out the advanced analytics, you can find the subscription at this link.
Mish Cirkunov …
… would tie Glover Teixeira’s record for the most submissions in UFC Light Heavyweight history (6) if he submits Ryan Spann this week. This will be his 10th UFC bout, Glover has 20.