Welcome to MMA Beyond the Numbers! - Edition 1
GOATs, Bayesian Priors and Halloween
First off, thank you so much for checking out the first edition of MMA Beyond the Numbers! It's exciting to prove to the world that I am not, in fact, a robot capable only of communicating in numbers.
This email will be the place to find my thoughts on the non-statistical side of the MMA world. Think Twitter, but from someone who can't put his thoughts together in 280 words. The topics are going to be wide-ranging, and the scope may shift over time — doing a newsletter is new to me and I'll see where writing every week takes me.
In general, I'll be weighing in on current events in the MMA world, interesting debates that I've seen popping up, reacting to news, trying my hand at comedy, and writing about whatever else I'm finding interesting that week.
If you have any feedback, I'm all ears. Like I said, this project is brand new and I'm still feeling out where I want to take it, so I'd love to hear your thoughts once you've read this one. Feel free to reply and I'll do my best to try to get back to everyone that does. And if you have any ideas for topics you’d like to see covered? No guarantee I’ll get to all of ‘em, but let me know and I’ll add them to the list.
I also wrote way more than I intended this week. They won't all be this long, and here's a topic list so you can jump around if any interest you.
Priors, and how Anderson Silva Got us Betting Value on Robert Whittaker
Is Khabib the GOAT?
Which MMA Nicknames Would Make the Best Halloween Costumes?
Let's kick things off the only way I know how — by getting really nerdy.
Priors, and how Anderson Silva Got us Betting Value on Robert Whittaker
For the non-nerds among you, a Bayesian Prior is a probability term that, essentially, allows the strength of our belief about one event help us figure out the probability of another.
The coin flip is the classic probability example. If my prior belief is that I am 100% certain a coin is fair, then after 10 straight heads I can assume it's still 50-50 on the next flip. But what about in the real world? What if your friend suddenly asks you to have a coin flipping competition, pulls out his own coin, and wins 10 in a row? You're a sucker if you think the next flip is still 50-50. Since you've never actually looked at the coin being flipped, you're far from 100% certain it's fair. And since 10 wins in a row is so unlikely, once that happens you'd have a real hunch the coin wasn't even. We don't have to get into the technical details of exactly what our prior was to start or how many heads need to be flipped to shift the probability. With no underlying math, this is still something that's going to just happen intuitively in that situation.
So how does this effect Anderson Silva and Robert Whittaker?
Before Anderson Silva fought Israel Adesanya, there were two priors being held by the general MMA world. 1) Anderson Silva was washed. 2) Israel Adesanya was incredible. But which belief was held more strongly? I'd say it was No. 1. Silva's last win was a questionable decision, and it had been more than 8 years since he last finished an opponent. But for Izzy, 3-fight hype trains are always fragile. MMA fans have seen two Johnny Walkers fizzle for every one Adesanya that lives up to the hype, so that belief was a little weaker.
Then Adesanya looked kind of underwhelming against Silva. The stronger prior ("Silva is washed") then had a stronger impact on how people viewed the fight. "Sure he beat washed up Silva, but he didn't look great. Izzy's not as good as he was hyped up to be, since anyone who is that good should have destroyed a washed-up Silva." Then he had his exciting win over Gastelum, but that fight was a war and not overly one-sided, so it didn't do enough to change perceptions. The next fight was Whittaker, and that was a vintage Adesanya performance, dominating in a way we hadn't seen since before the Silva fight. So then, if Adesanya dominated Whittaker worse than he did Silva, maybe Whittaker is washed up too? After all, he hd those two wars against Romero that may have taken their toll.
So now Whittaker, who was once a -275 favorite over Yoel Romero, was -170 (vs Till) and a +100 underdog (vs Cannonier) in his last two fights. Those both proved to be great bets, because it turns out Whittaker is just as good as he was before the Adesanya fight — the reality is that Adesanya is just that good.
Now lets rewind. What if we held our initial belief about Silva a little less strongly? After all, some thought he even beat Bisping, which would have made him basically 3-1 in his previous four fights, only really losing to Daniel Cormier on short notice. Well then, maybe it's not so bad that Adesanya didn't look spectacular against Silva? And if that fight didn’t slow down the hype, then maybe it's not so bad that Whittaker's loss was one-sided. So then given his loss was coming against such a dominant fighter, we wouldn't need to worry that Whittaker was on the decline. And there's no way that the pre-loss Whittaker would have had odds as low as he did against Till and Cannonier.
We're never right as often as we expect to be, and being over-confident in one wrong opinion can have a pretty huge chain reaction.
Is Khabib the GOAT?
I know that the wise man bows out of the GOAT conversation, declaring himself above such hypothetical nonsense. Why would you talk about who the GOAT is if it can't be proven and doesn’t matter?
Because it's fun.
The Khabib-GOAT argument seems to me to boil down to a couple points.
He never lost, in the UFC or otherwise.
He was incredibly dominant in his fights, not losing a round.
He never even really looked to be in danger of losing a fight.
Everyone seems to use different criteria in their own GOAT thoughts, so I think it's also worth outlining what's important to me.
How high a fighter's peak was in their prime. How long they sustained that dominance.
What kind of competition did they dominate?
Longevity
Records
Early-career stuff isn't all that important. If Khabib lost instead of winning his 10-minute decision against Ramazan Kurbanismailov in 2008 (his third pro fight), would that really matter? Does it matter that Jon Jones had a 75-second submission win against Anthony Pina in his third fight instead of a decision like Khabib? Not to me.
It starts to get tricky when we look at someone like GSP. Getting finished in a championship fight is different than, say, Anderson Silva dropping a decision to Luiz Azaredo. Some of my thoughts on that front need a topic of their own (winning fights vs being the better fighter, which I'll wax philosophical about some time in the future), but my emphasis remains on a fighter's peak, which for GSP seemed to begin right around the second Hughes fight.
Khabib's peak was as high as anyone's. A dominant champion who was finishing all of the top contenders. He defended his title three times though, and those three defenses were no more impressive than GSP beating Serra, Fitch and Penn in the first three defenses of his second title run. GSP also then added 7 more defenses, the majority of which were similarly dominant.
And looking at competition for the entire UFC career, Khabib's title defenses were against great opponents, but he wasn't around long enough to get a huge array of tough competition. It's great that he destroyed Abel Trujillo, Pat Healy and Darrell Horcher, but wins aren't all created equal. A dominant win over Horcher doesn't mean an awful lot.
And when we're comparing his undefeated streak to other potential GOATs, that really matters. GSP lost to Matt Hughes the first time, sure. That was also GSP's third UFC fight. Khabib almost lost to Gleison Tibau in his second UFC fight. If his next fight was against an opponent comparable to 2004-era Matt Hughes (Frankie Edgar would probably be the best comparison for the time), are we still talking about undefeated? GSP's 13-fight win streak from Koscheck to Bisping is undoubtedly a ton more impressive than Khabib's 13-fight streak in the UFC.
Going out on top is great for a fighter's mystique, and it's hard to penalize Khabib for hypotheticals "he might have lost" scenarios. But taken to the extreme, would anyone in the GOAT conversation be doing much better than Silva right now if they kept fighting at 44? Probably not. Khabib retiring at 32 means he never achieved something the other GOATs have, which is longevity against top competition.
But GSP went out on top too -- he just happened to do it after 10 title defenses. And then he even came back with that 2017 championship win over Bisping.
And of course, here I go with the numbers. Statistically, GSP's combination of longevity and dominance is just not even close to being matched. He has the most takedowns in UFC history. The most control time in UFC history. The most significant ground strikes landed. He's the only fighter in the top-10 for significant striking defense rate that fought top competition. He landed over twice as many distance strikes as he absorbed.
If Khabib's three title defenses were the three most dominant championship performances in UFC history, it might be closer in my mind. But the other common GOAT picks had peaks just as dominant, and those lasted much longer than three fights. To me, Khabib doesn't even crack the Silva/GSP/Jones/Mighty Mouse tier to be in the debate.
For the record, I'm an incredibly biased Canadian, and my pick is GSP.
Which UFC Nicknames Would Make the Best Halloween Costumes?
Considering both of those sections went way longer than I'd intended, and you probably don't want to use the entire week to get through reading this email, let's end on a quicker, lighter note. In the spirit of the week, here are the 5 UFC nicknames that would make the best Hallowe'en costumes.
I decided to skip regional fighters, because "The Ginger With the Intent to Injure" was too obvious a number-one pick.
5. "The Korean Zombie" Chan Sung Jung
You have to be Korean to pull this one off, but if you've got that part covered then the rest should be easy to find at any costume store.
4. Tamdan "The Barn Cat" McCrory
The "sexy cat" costume is a classic. If you're like me and can't pull off "sexy", then the barn cat is a nice fallback.
3. Antonio "Cara de Sapato" Carlos Junior
Translates to "shoeface". It's simple, it just requires something you already have around the house, and it's ridiculous.
2. Steve "The Creepy Weasel" Montgomery
Think this guy, but with a couple strategically-placed alterations to the costume.
1. Luis "Violent Bob Ross" Pena
Your non-MMA fan friends may not know *why* anyone would dress up as "violent bob ross", but with a wig, a pallet and an axe, there wouldn't be any confusion about your costume.
Honorable mention: Corey "Beastin’ 25/8" Anderson. I don't know how you'd dress as Beastin’ 25/8, but I'm never going to make a list of MMA nicknames without including my favorite so-bad-its-good entry.
If you made it through all 1,934 words (more numbers!), thank you! I really appreciate everyone who has subscribed and is reading, and I’m really excited to add this newsletter to my regular rotation of content. Once again, if you have any feedback, questions or topics you want to read about, please don’t hesitate to reach out!
Yours 25/8,
Jason