It’s a huge faux pas in the online gambling community to brag about your winners if you made no public announcement of your play prior to the sporting contest. So, with FightMetric releasing their report for last night’s UFC 108 main event between Rashad Evans and Thiago Silva, I say the following with a whole heaping of reservation.
I scored the fight a 29-29 draw with the second round as the dreaded 10-10.
I didn’t tweet it. I didn’t post it in the live thread. Hell, I didn’t even casually mention it in the post-fight analysis. To be fair, I put a bet on Silva, and I’m always a little wary of offering bold statements in fights in which I may not be able to trust my own sense of objectivity.
In any case, I wasn’t exactly shocked when I woke up to this:
| Evans | Silva | |
| R1 | 81 | 41 |
| R2 | 44 | 42 |
| R3 | 31 | 51 |
| Total | 156 | 134 |
That translates into a 29-29 draw if you extrapolate the Effectiveness Scores into the ten point must system. FightMetric gives the nod to Rashad if we look at the fight as a whole, and I’m not sure many people are going to disagree that if you factor in the other (and as I’ve pointed out before, inane) criteria, Rashad takes decision.
Still, round two is another data point we can toss around when we discuss the limitations of the current judging criteria. Rashad only landed 8 strikes in the round (3 power shots) while going 3-7 on his takedowns and only passing to half-guard once. Thiago landed 22 strikes (5 power shots) and was more active throwing 31 strikes to Rashad’s 23.
In addition, Rami Genaur of FightMetric found this fun stat:
Despite landing eight takedowns throughout the match, Evans managed to land only three strikes on the ground. It is exceedingly rare to see an instance where a fighter lands more takedowns than ground strikes. In fact, Evans now holds the record for least strikes landed by a fighter with five or more takedowns landed.
…
This, of course, begs the question represented by the equation in the title: In the absence of any striking (or submission attempts, for that matter) once on the ground, are takedowns really an effective offensive technique?