Can someone please explain to me why we continue to resist the five round non-title fight?
Last night’s Fight Night main event between Gray Maynard and Nate Diaz may as well have been decided by a coin flip. Both fighters had arguments for winning each of the three rounds. Maynard ended up taking the split decision – in my mind, a result of his more effective counter punching, but Diaz made his case with an overwhelming onslaught of strikes.
FightMetric released their report for the bout, and the numbers reflect the general observation. The effectiveness scores as follows:
| Maynard | Diaz | |
| R1 | 54 | 40 |
| R2 | 72 | 74 |
| R3 | 76 | 81 |
| T | 202 | 195 |
That extrapolates into a ten-point must system score card of 29-29 with Maynard and Diaz splitting rounds 1 and 3 respectively, and round 2 going 10-10.
Diaz landed 77 of 259 strikes, dwarfing Maynard’s output of 52 landed strikes out of 153 attempted. The difference lies on the strikes thrown. Maynard landed three times as many power shots to the head (19 to 6) and five times as many to the body (10 to 2). Out of Diaz’s 77 successful strikes, over half (49) were designated as head jabs.
Perhaps this fight serves as a template for valuing effective vs. volume striking. Diaz and Maynard landed at a similar percentage (29.7% to 34.0%), so it might be fair to say that an effective power shot is worth 1.5 times that of a basic jab. Hopefully, more research can be done on this topic.