Handicapping MMA?

[Jaymun]

Long time lurker, first time poster.

There seems to be virtually no discussion on handicapping MMA here. Why is this? Is it simply because most of the contributing factors to a fight aren't able to be expressed in numbers to come up with a formula? I've tried for a long time to come up with a decent way to handicap MMA, but so far all I've been able to do is watch past fights and analyze the upcoming fights closely. I've done this with relative success, but I'm a stat nerd anyway so I've also been trying to figure out any useful formulas, to no avail.

That being said I'm particularly good at handicapping any other sports with numbers either, so I was wondering if anyone else has any success with MMA?

[onlooker]

http://forum.sbrforum.com/boxing-mma-ufc-betting/

[brettd]

I don't think there's enough betting events to make effort in creating a model worthwhile. Why cap MMA when you could expend effort capping tennis, football, etc with many more betting events to choose from?

[subs]

i remember reading from a respected poster that MMA is more art than stats, however he did feel that there r good opportunities for this exact reason.

sorry prolly not v helpful.

GL

[Sawyer]

I don't think there's enough betting events to make effort in creating a model worthwhile. Why cap MMA when you could expend effort capping tennis, football, etc with many more betting events to choose from?

I think so. Specially tennis is amazing. Almost 10½ months/year schedule, lots of games, tournaments everyday!

[Juret]

this should be in your interest, although I haven't watched all of it myself

http://www.sloansportsconference.com/?p=5493

[jgilmartin]

this should be in your interest, although I haven't watched all of it myself

http://www.sloansportsconference.com/?p=5493

Interesting...haven't watched it yet but have been considering the premise for a while now. Thanks

[JohnGalt2341]

This site is interesting http://www.mma-elo.com/ But it's FAR from perfect.

[MonkeyF0cker]

There are obviously certain things that you could quantify, such as: striking, takedowns/throws, submissions.

It gets rather difficult with ground fighting and disciplines. Perhaps, you could do something with position and leverage/control (among other things).

It would take a lot of work just to develop a database to quantify those things unless someone is tracking them for every fight already. You'd have to watch a lot of tape. It's not something that I'd care to tackle.

Good luck.

[jgilmartin]

Also, consider how difficult it would be to quantify, for lack of a better term, "strength of schedule," given the multitude of different MMA promotions around the world. Complete clusterfuck.