Fantasy Fights
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SILVA Predictions for UFC 146
Posted by on May 26, 2012
A few surprises here:
Since I’ve written a preview post on the main card fights, here are some quick thoughts on the preliminaries:
-Diego Brandao is a heavy favorite to beat Darren Elkins, but SILVA seems to think Elkins is the heavy favorite. Brandao has a handful of TKO losses in his career, so that seems to be the way to beat him, but Elkins has only shown a marginal ability to win that way. I’ll go along with the betting public and pick Brandao in this one.
-Anybody who’s followed this blog knows all about how much I like Edson Barboza, and I’ve thought he would be a UFC superstar since before he made his UFC debut against Mike Lullo. So far, he hasn’t disappointed, and there’s no way in hell I’m not going to pick him to beat Jamie Varner. Hopefully Varner will at least test Barboza’s wrestling and grappling, unlike Barboza’s UFC opponents thus far.
-Jason “Mayhem” Miller is a better striker and has a better ground game than C.B. Dollaway, but Dollaway has better wrestling. In the end, this may come down to who gasses out first, and while Miller looked awful against Bisping, his gassing out was a bit of an aberration in my opinion. I like Miller to win, but it’s close.
-I’m definitely going against SILVA in Dan Hardy vs. Duane Ludwig. Ludwig is awful on the ground, while Hardy has at least shown the ability to survive there, which explains the difference in how good these fighters are overall. But in this specific style match, I have to favor Ludwig, as he’s a better striker than Hardy.
-I’m going against SILVA for a third time in Jacob Volkmann vs. Paul Sass. Volkmann is actually the betting favorite, but what I wrote about how much I like Edson Barboza applies to Sass as well. It’s also a bad style match for Volkmann, who is a terrific wrestler and great at positioning, but has had to battle his fair share of submission attempts made against him. Enter Sass, the most likely fighter in MMA to want to be in bottom position on the ground.
-The biggest shocker is Glover Teixeira, whose SILVA score of 79.74 rates him #5 in the world at light-heavyweight. Teixeira has built his SILVA score in a similar manner as Nick Diaz and Hector Lombard: he’s beaten decent/good fighters on a very consistent basis. The only difference is that Teixeira hasn’t had a platform like Strikeforce or Bellator to showcase his skills. I like him to beat Kyle Kingsbury and at least make a run into title contention in the UFC light-heavyweight division.
-Daniel Pineda has looked very impressive in the UFC thus far, but on the flip side, his opponents were Max Holloway and Mackens Semerzier. Mike Brown may represent a step up in competition, but Brown has looked like a shot fighter since losing to Jose Aldo in the WEC. It’s a hard one to call, but I’ll go along with SILVA and take Pineda.
SILVA Predictions for UFC 139
Posted by on November 19, 2011
Preliminary Fights on Facebook
- 155 lbs: Danny Castillo (46.48) over Shamar Bailey (36.27)
- 170 lbs: Seth Baczynski (38.83) over Matt Brown (32.53)
- 135 lbs: Miguel Torres (63.36) over Nick Pace (23.61)
- 155 lbs: Rafael dos Anjos (52.46) over Gleison Tibau (51.09)
- 185 lbs: Chris Weidman (60.65) over Tom Lawlor (45.05)
Preliminary Fights on Spike TV
- 135 lbs: Michael McDonald (63.62) over Alex Soto (31.70)
- 205 lbs: Ryan Bader (64.07) over Jason Brilz (55.15)
Main Card Fights on PPV
- 205 lbs: Kyle Kingsbury (70.63) over Stephan Bonnar (37.62)
- 170 lbs: Rick Story (75.61) over Martin Kampmann (59.71)
- 135 lbs: Brian Bowles (78.59) over Urijah Faber (47.21)
- 185 lbs: Cung Le (62.70) over Wanderlei Silva (50.10)
- 205 lbs: Mauricio “Shogun” Rua (77.07) over Dan Henderson (74.28)
Summary
This is probably as good as it gets for a pay-per-view card without a title fight. Rua vs. Henderson is a fight that’s been long anticipated by fight fans, and should be a very entertaining main event. There’s talent throughout the main card, great fighters like Ryan Bader and Michael McDonald on Spike TV, and then on top of that, you’re giving me Miguel Torres, Chris Weidman, and Rafael dos Anjos vs. Gleison Tibau on the Facebook prelims? This is a fantastic fight card.
The big underdog pick of the card
Either the betting public is severely overrating Urijah Faber, or SILVA is really off the mark, because SILVA favors Brian Bowles to beat Faber by a 31-point margin, but Faber is about a 5-2 favorite to win on the betting lines. After looking at Faber’s recent fight history, and his stats on Fight Metric, I feel pretty good about the Bowles pick, but it’s not like I’ve been doing wonderful on my underdog picks. The other underdog pick of the card is Rafael dos Anjos, who is a slight underdog to Gleison Tibau.
UFC 139 Preview: Stephan Bonnar vs. Kyle Kingsbury
Posted by on November 17, 2011
One of the concepts that has become ingrained in the lexicon of many statistically-minded sports fans, and even statistically-minded people in general, is the concept of “replacement level.” In sports, replacement level is loosely defined as the level of performance that can be readily replaced with a player who is either on the bench, in the minor leagues, or on the street. Because this level of performance can be replaced so easily, it stands to reason that the replacement-level player offers no value above that of the readily available talent pool, and that such a player should be paid either a minimum salary, or something close to it.
In mixed martial arts, the concept of “replacement level” is much harder to pin down. The reason is because, in the UFC, the motivation behind employing fighters goes beyond just how good they are, and moves toward what they do for the company’s bottom line. In traditional sports such as baseball and football, revenue is very closely related to winning, and therefore, a player’s value is very closely tied to his ability to help his team win. In MMA, this is not necessarily the case. After all, Elite XC didn’t center its promotion around Kimbo Slice because he was going to become some sort of champion.
Then we have Stephan Bonnar. Bonnar is a well-known fighter, primarily for the slobberknocker he fought against Forrest Griffin that has been repeatedly referred to as the most important fight in UFC history. In many of Bonnar’s fights, it’s a very good bet that he’s going to put on a very entertaining scrap. But from a standpoint of measuring a fighter’s ability to win in the UFC, I would imagine Bonnar as a very good example of a “replacement level” fighter.
To explain this, I’m going to use SILVA as a barometer of how good a fighter is. According to SILVA, Stephan Bonnar currently has a score of 37.62, which ranks 36th out of the 47 light-heavyweight fighters that have been measured by the system. Here is the list of fighters who rate below Bonnar at 205 pounds:
- Igor Pokrajac
- Seth Petruzelli
- Eliot Marshall
- Alexandre Ferreira
- James Irvin
- Matt Lucas
- Anthony Perosh
- Tom Blackledge
- Karlos Vemola
- Goran Reljic
- Todd Brown
Pokrajac is still in the UFC, but only by virtue of beating Irvin and Brown, both of whom have been cut. Petruzelli, Ferreira, and Reljic are gone. The remaining names – Marshall, Lucas, Perosh, Blackledge, and Vemola – don’t inspire a whole lot of confidence. I am pretty confident that all of these fighters will eventually be cut by the UFC.
Meanwhile, names of fighters rated above Bonnar include Rodney Wallace, Ricardo Romero, and Keith Jardine. I think it’s very reasonable to suggest that Bonnar would be about at the level of a “replacement level” fighter as far as the UFC goes.
But in the UFC, replacement level performance doesn’t tell the whole story about a fighter’s value. From what I can tell, there are three general ways to be valuable in the UFC:
- Winning fights – the UFC can promote you as a threat, even if you’re not particularly exciting
- Being a big name – a fighter that fans want to watch
- Being exciting – causing people who watch your fight to want to watch more fights
Bonnar doesn’t win fights, at least not enough to be of value to the UFC. He’s not a particularly big name, either: people recognize his name, but nobody’s going to buy a pay-per-view because of Bonnar. The reason Bonnar is valuable to the UFC, and still a UFC fighter, is his ability to put on exciting fights. It’s still important to win some fights, but Bonnar does enough of that (7-6 in his UFC career) to survive in the promotion.
And that’s why the UFC leads pay-per-view broadcasts with fights like Stephan Bonnar vs. Kyle Kingsbury. Now, SILVA 1.1 actually likes Kingsbury a lot, assigning him a SILVA score of 70.63, good for 9th in the light-heavyweight division. SILVA sees Kingsbury’s record and likes what he’s put together. It doesn’t hurt that SILVA throws out fights against opponents with fewer than five career professional fights of their own, meaning that Kingsbury’s loss to Tony Lopez is not considered in the system. (Expect me to address that in a future version.) But let’s face it: Kingsbury is fighting Stephan Bonnar because it’s bound to be an entertaining brawl.
For evidence, check out Kingsbury’s last fight, a sloppy but entertaining battle with Fabio Maldonado. It was a pretty close fight, and Maldonado landed a number of hard punches, including quite a few body shots, but in the end, Kingsbury did just enough to win a decision. It’s the kind of fight that highlights the limitations of SILVA: SILVA merely sees it as a Kingsbury win. It doesn’t know that it wasn’t the kind of fight that suggests Kingsbury will be any sort of title contender. It doesn’t help that Kingsbury’s heavily muscled body isn’t well-suited for the sport; he was beet red within two minutes of the fight starting.
SILVA PREDICTION: KYLE KINGSBURY (70.63) OVER STEPHAN BONNAR (37.62)
If you want a 15 minute brawl, this is a very good way to get it. These two are going to brawl, and neither one is likely to go down. Kingsbury will gas out quickly, but Bonnar will probably be ill-equipped to take advantage of it, as the stronger Kingsbury will likely wear out Bonnar as well. If you want to see the most technical, high-quality MMA the sport has to offer, then you won’t find it in this fight. But if you want shameless entertainment, you’ll get plenty of it here.
Fantasy Fights 
Thoughts About UFC 139
Now that I’ve had time to settle down, I’d like to produce a more formal post talking about what happened at UFC 139, and what it means for the participants on the card.
I’m thrilled to no end that the fight between Dan Henderson and Mauricio “Shogun” Rua is getting praise as one of the best MMA fights of all time. When you’re watching in the arena, things sometimes seem much more exciting or amazing than they actually are. That wasn’t the case for this fight – it was really one of the best MMA fights ever, and it seemed that way both in the arena and on TV.
Watching live, I thought that either the judges would give the fight to Henderson, or it would be a draw. My personal scoring was draw because I thought the fifth round was clearly 10-8 in favor of Rua, but I wasn’t surprised at all when Henderson was announced as the winner. At the time, I was in no mood to be irritated, as I was just thrilled to have seen such a great fight. Looking back, I do believe that Rua was ripped off, as he clearly won the fourth round, and clearly won the fifth round in my opinion. I wonder if the judges are averse to scoring fights as a draw, because that was a pretty darn dominant round on Rua’s part.
Wanderlei Silva and Cung Le put on a great fight as well, and let me say that I’m officially out of the business of telling fighters they should retire. I did it with Tito Ortiz, and he responded with a first-round submission of Ryan Bader. Now, I’ve done it with Wanderlei Silva, and the result was an extremely exciting fight, and a great second-round TKO win for Silva. That’s not to say that I think the future is bright for either Ortiz or Silva – both fighters are still well past their prime – but I will say that just because a fighter is past his prime and struggling doesn’t mean that fighter has nothing left.
Urijah Faber made my preview for his fight with Brian Bowles look really stupid. He was more aggressive, more active, and really fought for the finish. Bowles is very tough, and kept fighting at a point that some fighters would have quit, but Faber was just the better man on Saturday night. I’ll have another post written about SILVA’s predictions later, as I feel I need to talk about SILVA going 0-5 on the UFC 139 main card, but for now, I’ll just say that I was wrong about Faber and that he earned his rubber match against Dominick Cruz.
Other thoughts: