Nov. 7, 2009 was a big day for Strikeforce. The promotion made its network television debut and heavyweight legend, Fedor Emelianenko, stepped into the Strikeforce cage for the very first time to face the up-and-coming Brett Rogers.
Today we’re taking a look back at the 1st round of their main event scrap. The motivation was this Twitter exchange between our own Tim B. and our former own Pat Wyman. To give a quick summary, Pat and other staff at Sherdog put together a list of their Top 10 MMA “Flashes in the Pan” fighters. Brett Rogers was at #3, beginning his MMA career 10-0 with all KO/TKO victories (I count submissions by strikes as TKOs) and finishing four of his first five major MMA bouts in the 1st round. His dominant performances set up a date with “The Last Emperor,” who was making his promotional debut.
At the risk of being overly general, Pat argues that Rogers took the 1st round while Tim goes with Fedor. We all know who took the 2nd round – Rogers ran his face into a lunging Fedor’s right cross – but the 1st can be up for legitimate debate. So let’s hop in our DeLorean, put on some Blackstreet and go back…way back…back into time to re-examine the 1st round from a nerdy statistical perspective.
Strikes missed weren’t meaningfully lopsided in favor of any particular fighter so we’re going to focus on strikes landed. In terms of significant strikes, Rogers outlanded Fedor 14 to 4 in round 1. Those who are regular readers know that significant strikes is an excellent statistic if it’s the only piece of information you have or if your target audience (such as casual fans) isn’t interested in finer details. FightMetric tracks over 140 different statistics per fighter per round, so with access to their detailed information we can dig a little deeper.
The fight began with Rogers landing a jab to Fedor’s face and opening up a cut around his nose. The cut got worse as the round went on and became a bloody mess when Rogers dropped a few bombs from Fedor’s guard. This is significant because damage is the third highest-scoring performance element inside the cage, behind knocking your opponent down and getting a tight submission. While damage doesn’t explicitly enter the Unified Rules of MMA, my research has shown it has a strong effect on judges, and it likely consciously or subconsciously affects you too (but not necessarily with the same weight).
A significant portion of the fight occurred on the ground. Fedor had two takedowns, one leading to an immediate Rogers standup and one leading to extended ground time after a powerful left hook to Roger’s skull and an explosion of cheering from the audience thinking there might be a finish. Fedor ended up with 33 seconds of guard control and 1:03 of half-guard control. He also had 27 seconds of miscellaneous control time during transitions and while standing over Rogers.
The problem is Fedor didn’t do much on the ground. He flurried with seven or eight strikes in an attempt to finish Rogers. But other than that, Fedor was pretty inactive in 2:03 of overall ground control. He landed seven jabs (non-power strikes) and two power shots while on the ground with most coming during the initial flurry.
One could argue that Fedor kept busy by attempting three submissions during his time on the ground: a kimura as Rogers was getting a sweep, an arm bar as Rogers was striking from Fedor’s guard, and an arm triangle from half-guard. However each attempt was relatively unthreatening and none made the cut to count as an official submission attempt which, according to FightMetric, must be “locked in” in some manner and “sustained for an appreciable amount of time.”
Rogers had decent control of his own. He had clinch control for 1:07 – which tends to be about 74 percent as valuable as time with guard control – landing ten knees to the thigh, one body shot, and one head strike. Nine of these 12 strikes were power shots. Meanwhile Fedor landed 11 head jabs with his arms extended out to the side due to Rogers’ double underhooks.
So who won the round? Rogers was more active landing power shots (which generally count 3-5 times as much as jabs), had some control, a sweep and bloodied Fedor up while Fedor had more control, two takedowns and landed at least one big shot that drew a huge roar from the crowd. Fedor clearly had the crowd on his side and Rogers looked tired towards the end, but noise and looking tired can’t be quantified at the moment.
Note: The body jab differential is classified as neutral because the average judge gives it no weight in scoring decisions. Examples of body jabs are the all-arm ribcage strikes that are thrown from the top with your posture broken in guard, on bottom while breaking your opponent’s posture from the guard and in the clinch when your opponent is pressing you against the cage.
My MMA judging model yields a 69.9 percent chance the average judge would score Rogers the winner, declining to 56.9 percent if we make the judge immune to the influence of Fedor’s busted up nose. The model doesn’t know who these guys are, who the crowd favorite is or who got tired towards the end. It only knows the fighters’ observable performance statistics during a round and how MMA judges tend to value them. The main reason it leans towards Rogers is because of his power shot advantage and damage to Fedor’s face. Fedor landed arguably the best strike of the round and had more ground control, but was otherwise mostly inactive. Meanwhile each fighter had one brief flurry.
At the end of the day we’re talking about judging, which is open to opinion, viewing angles, weighing and interpretation. That’s why the model assigns percentages rather than picking absolute winners. Fedor clearly won the fight but did he win the 1st round? How did you score it? Are there any other fights or rounds you’d like to have broken down in future pieces? Let your opinion be known and share any suggestions in the comments below.
Paul Gift is an economics professor and Bloody Elbow analytics writer. All mistakes are his own, and they’ve been known to happen sometimes. Follow him @MMAanalytics. Fight data provided by FightMetric.