After years of persistent hounding from the likes of Joe Rogan, the UFC has finally taken the advice and added leg reach statistics to their “Tale of the Tape” format for future events.
The use of leg reach stats will become a permanent addition to all future UFC events and had been added to further separate MMA from its traditional counterpart, boxing. Apart from country of origin and age, the pre-fight stats only showed height, weight and arm reach.
While the decision to add these latest stats is presumed to be a necessary one, it does not mean that there will be significant discrepancy between the stats as can be seen in arm reach.
“We know what arm reach is, we know what a sizeable discrepancy is in arm reach,” FightMetric research analyst Michael Carroll told MMAjunkie. “Jon Jones with his 84.5 versus, say, Dan Henderson with 76. That’s a huge difference. But what’s a huge difference in leg reach? I have no idea. It’s going to take a little while on the analytical side of things to figure out what’s a good length in proportion to what weight class you’re in and what’s a sizable discrepancy. A sizable discrepancy in leg reach might be much smaller than arm reach.”
The overall value of this latest decision is yet to be determined. Some may see the addition of these enriched stats to be nothing more than added numbers thrown at viewers, but it is a step in the right direction when considering fighters who are not traditional strikers and are more kick-based.
Transcription taken from MMAJunkie.com’s Mike Bohn.
About the author
