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You know how every major sport has crazy statistical breakdowns of every game that’s ever been played? Somewhere in this country, some guy knows what Carney Lansford’s career batting average is, or Brett Favre’s winning percentage when it’s below 40 degrees.

Those kind of hard statistics don’t exist for MMA yet, but FightMetric is beginning to put data together. Right now, they face the huge task of creating a backlog of thousands of fights that have already taken place. However, creating meaningful statistics on MMA won’t be as easy, due to the unpredictable nature of a fight…. check out what Fight Metric founder Rami Genauer has to say.

“The issue is that MMA is a mess in terms of creating comparable data sets. For example, every major professional baseball game is nine innings long and the way to beat your opponent is by scoring more runs than they do. MMA has variable match lengths; some last 20 minutes, some last 20 seconds but result in the same outcome. MMA has variable rules and judging criteria; what won fights in Pride wouldn’t work in the UFC. To make things worse, MMA has multiple victory methods or differing quality; you can dominate your opponent or score a lucky cut stoppage or eke out a bogus decision and they all equal a win on your record. Some would look at those factors and say MMA and stats are incompatible. I think it means we have to think more creatively.”

After looking over stats for the Cung Le / Frank Shamrock match, I can definitely say this is going to take some getting used to. But I’m down….