I didn't catch the main but in every Bendo fight ever he fixes his hair at least 3 times a round to the detriment of his fighting

Hit Daley at 4.2, Pitbull at 3.1 both on Matchbook and took Ayala at 2.75. Getting matched often on Matchbook when I throw up underdogs at pretty decent prices.

lol. yeah his hair was completely dishevelled by r3. BH went from being a fighter I kinda like watching to someone that makes me cringe. He is done IMO.

Thoughts on UFC 216? I faded the Page Van Zant hype train at +125, but that's my only move so far.

I think PVZ is all marketing and hype, people overrate how good of a fighter she is because she's super hot. She's also doing a bunch of appearances on TV shows and seems more interested in using MMA to become a D-List celebrity than in actually being a good UFC fighter.

I'm also very tempted to bet on Fabricio Werdum and will probably pull the trigger. He's 40 years old but he still looks good and is vastly more skilled than Derek Brunson. I think that Derek Brunson has maybe a 20 - 25% puncher's chance, but otherwise this should be a rout - it's basically a fight between a moderately skilled guy who is built like an NFL linebacker and a world-class BJJ guy who also has significantly better standup. Pretty attractive at -255 imo.

I have a high opinion of Kevin Lee and will probably end up betting him, but I don't think he's a favorite in this fight, just that he's probably more of a 40-45% dog than a 2-1 dog. Kevin Lee reminds me of a young GSP (his standup isn't as good as GSP, but he's an even better athlete / wrestler) but Tony Ferguson has a very dangerous guard and is significantly more dangerous on his feet.

In order for Kevin Lee to win, he needs to secure the take down, control a very dangerous BJJ guy from the top, and either submit him or GnP him for 5 rounds. He definitely has the tools to do that, but if Tony Ferguson can successfully stop the takedowns / neutralize him from the bottom, he should be able to win standing up due to his reach advantage and superior boxing.

PVZ-Eye expected to be pulled. PVZ hurt.

https://www.mmafighting.com/2017/9/2...d-from-ufc-216

""Fabricio Werdum... He's 40 years old but he still looks good and is vastly more skilled than Derek Brunson.""

Ha ha. It's Derrick Lewis.

Yeah I meant Derrick Lewis, obviously. Guess the morning coffee hadn't really kicked in yet. Do you have anything of value to add on how you see the fight going down?

Motivated by the variance I've observed I updated my back testing to see what the model would have realized over the last few years. I've got the closing line on pinnacle for pretty much all PPV, Fight Night and UFC on Fox events starting in 2012. This is the biggest assumption in the back testing, as you never get the actual closing line, but something close to it. Other things, like the model parameter estimates, are all updated before each betting period, and as the variable selection and parameter estimates are stable over time they are unlikely to skew the results with hindsight bias.



This is the result of risking $1 every bet. Obviously it scales to whatever bet size pinnacle will accept, although only what they would accept for most underdogs on the prelims as I can't account for the bias varying bet size with pinnacles betting limits would cause (the model picks about 2 underdogs for every favorite).

Overall this represents ~7% ROI. There were no losing years, but obviously there are some rough stretches. Not sure what to make of it in conclusion, but thought it was interesting enough to post.

That's pretty cool that your models beating Pinny over the past few years. Congrats and hope it profits for you in the long term.

Werdum looks like a bet in theory, i've gone from liking Werdum to disliking him in the past year or two but he should handle Lewis here unless Lewis puts one on his chin in r1. He's gone infinity rounds with Overeem over 3 fights without being finished. Obviously if Werdum gets a takedown at all he'll submit him but I think Werdum's a fav on the feet from r2 onwards as well.

I think I like Will Brooks to beat Nik Lentz even though Brooks has disappointed so far in the UFC, hopefully Brooks gives Lentz the beatdown he deserves and he can go on to his new career of trying to be Donald Trump's press secretary. I don't see Lentz as having any chance beyond LnP here and Brooks wrestling should be good enough to keep it standing and beat him up on the feet. Hoping for -200 or better on Brooks.

Really looking forward to Green/Vannata, that could be a great fight if they both bring it. Turns out Vannata and Green were both a bit overhyped at points but I still think Vannata has the potential to be top 15 so i'll probably take him if I can get him at evens or better. If Green's a substantial dog like +200 or more i'd play him too.

Bibulatov's probably a bet i'm happy to fade Moraga if it's at close to evens that's the sort of fight where the line could be anything and I wouldn't be surprised.

Tavares vs Leites is interesting too i'd be pretty happy to take either as a decent dog.

For the main the odds seem about right, i'd take Ferguson at -150 or Lee at +250 or better, going to probably leave it for now.

Maglame,

Good stuff. It's been fun watching you develop this and I appreciate you sharing.

I'm still pretty fascinated by the very concept that you can create a model. Any recommended sites where I can learn more about doing it?

Thought both main cards were pretty good. Okami mailed it in. Not sure how much Benson Henderson has left. PVZ- Eye is confirmed off of 216

Anyone else not crazy about idea of a Mcgregor- Diaz 3? Much rather see him fight Lee/ Ferguson / Khabib

Moot point now that the fight has been cancelled, and I agree about her clearly being interested in building a D-list celebrity profile. She appears to train pretty hard around that though, and I believe she's left Alpha Male as well (which can only be good for her development).

I'm not saying she's an amazing fighter or destined for the championship or anything, she's clearly not. I don't recall many people rating her as a future champion or a super-amazing fighter either though?

She's got three losses against three very good fighters, but she's shown she can beat lower level competition, especially fighters prone to making mistakes. Plus fading her in this fight would have meant backing Jessica Eye, which would have made me even more nervous... don't let the hate go to far is what I'm saying I guess. VanZant isn't great, but she's not that bad either.

I've got no real interest in seeing Conor fight Khabib at this stage, and I think the UFC has zero interest in making that fight until Khabib proves he can actually make it to fight day.

Would be more than happy to see him fight the Lee-Ferguson winner (I'm assuming probably Ferguson). If he wants to fight Nate again though... meh? The second fight was great, it's not like I'd be sad to see them go at it again.

I could ask the same question myself. When I started out I found some help in how to collect the data, but not really any when it comes to analyzing it and building a model. That has all been based on utilizing stuff I've learned doing my econ degree. I'm really curious what a very sharp sports betting model actually "looks" like.

I'm glad some ppl seem to not regard my posts as spam. I do feel a bit guilty that I can't really contribute to helping people pick fights better. My model (seemingly) gives useful predictions, but it's not very descriptive. You couldn't use it to improve as an MMA fighter for example. It would just tell you to "be better" or "be younger" or "have a different style" or something similarly useless.

I don't really mind a third Diaz fight, but you'd think McGregor has that close to locked up (well, as locked up as a fight can be against a good fighter in MMA). He only has to do what he did in the second fight, and I expect he'll do it even better. I have a hard time seeing Diaz really add another layer to that and come out in the third fight doing anything other than what he did in the first or second. Ferguson or Khabib are much more interesting fights I think because of that.

Yeah it's too bad this fight got cancelled. Hopefully it gets rescheduled for sometime soon.

I watched Jessica Eye's fight against Bethe Correia last night and actually liked what I saw from her. She's not very strong physically and is prone to getting overpowered, but it's not like PVZ is particularly strong either so that's less of a concern, and Jessica Eye has pretty good hands.

I think in general when fighters start focusing on things other than going to the gym everyday and getting better, it's a serious red flag. I don't have a robust data set of fighters who have gotten distracted with other things to test or anything like that, but anecdotally Ronda with her movie career comes to mind (although obviously training with Edmund didn't really help matters.)

Plus, with PVZ, people are presumably biased towards liking her since she's hot and well known, which implies that everything else being equal, there's probably some EV in fading her since there's likely to be more casual money betting on her.

Also, why do you think leaving Alpha Male would be good for her development? I would think that would be terrible for her development. The only example I can think of where a fighter left and clearly got better is TJ Dillishaw with Duane Ludwig, but I think that was kind of a special case.

You can make the argument he got better with help from Dwayne at tam, but how did he get better after leaving?

Meh, I basically meant that Duane Ludwig was clearly a big positive for his development. I suppose a lot of that happened at Alpha Male, although obviously Ludwig is no longer with the camp.

But yeah, I'm not really of the opinion that leaving that team would be good for anyone. Iron sharpens iron, and all that.

I agree, I understand that he wants to 'win' the rivalry, for now he redeemed himself by making it 1-1 but Diaz still has the finish and Conor has a close dec so I can get why he wants to do it. Still, i'd rather see him fight the contenders. I'm fine with it if it's for the belt so long as he's defending a minimum of twice a year and ideally 3+ times, if he fights Diaz first he needs to fight the Ferguson/Lee winner by mid 2018 at least and ideally Khabib after that.

If he's fought Diaz, Ferg/Lee winner and Khabib by the end of 2018 i'll be pretty happy. If I could only see two fights it would be Ferguson (or Lee if he steals his spot) and Khabib though. If Conor just does what he did in the 2nd fight but drills cardio and TDD all camp and now has slightly better boxing as a result of training for Floyd he should just win pretty easily against Diaz.

I'd bet Conor pretty confidently against Ferguson as I think he can wreck him standing, Khabib's the most interesting clash of styles (although the fight probably won't be that good as I expect Conor will either KO him quickly or Khabib will take him down, beat him up and submit him on the ground if he can land takedowns at will)

Apparently rumours of the Diaz 3 fight at 219 aren't true but I mean it's not like you can trust anything Dana White says, so we'll have to just wait and see. If Ferguson was smart he'll talk a lot of **** about Conor running from him and being a ***** and so on if he beats Lee next weekend.

TAM with Ludwig was totally different to TAM without Ludwig, a lot of their fighters (most notably TJ and Mendes but others too) improved their striking drastically under him. Even Castillo went on a decent run when he was his striking coach. After leaving, the entire team has stagnated basically and nobody seems to be improving anymore. If I wanted to train to be an MMA fighter i'd snap train at Elevation over TAM. In fact i'd train at virtually any of the top camps over TAM.

Was gonna reply but this is a good unbiaised answer right here

Swoop, I know you don't like tam, and I think you are right in a lot of your criticism, but they have been doing well post Ludwig. TJ lost the belt post departure. I believe Ludwig helped them a lot, but I also think he was given too much credit in many narratives.

Possibly, but their results have fallen off a cliff since he left with the exception of Cody and Cody hadn't even debuted in the UFC when Bang left TAM so we don't know how he would have fared under Bang. He's been TAM's only real success story since they parted ways with Bang.

TJ's looked about the same since leaving TAM to stay with Bang, lost a close split to Cruz and dominated the rest of his fights against Barao, Assuncao and Lineker.

This is pretty much how the TAM notables who were there both pre and post Bang went went after Bang left

Faber fell off a cliff but granted that was probably due to age. Went 3-3 but one of the wins was due to eye poke in a fight he was losing so could have easily been 2-4.

Mendes went 1-3 and got popped for PEDs, granted his 3 losses were against the top 3 featherweights

Castillo went 0-3 in the UFC and got cut

Holdsworth got concussed in the gym and hasn't fought since

Fili went 3-3 and has basically become a journeyman instead of a prospect, he is clearly UFC level but will never be top 15.

Benavidez hasn't lost since, but he split his time between TAM and Elevation

Buchholz went 1-2 outside the UFC


Everyone else of note who is currently with TAM basically started their UFC career after Bang left.

So basically, Benavidez went to elevation and is unbeaten since and will probably get another title shot soon. TJ went to elevation and went 3-0 vs top contenders, lost a split to the champ at the time and is fighting for the belt at 217

The combined records of Faber/Mendes/Castillo/Buchholz/Fili is 8-14 since Bang left

In Dec 12 to leaving at UFC 173 in 2014 under Bang these are their results when he was head coach at TAM

Fili was 1-1 under Bang but his loss was to Holloway a future champ
Faber went 5-1 with his only loss being to the champ at the time
Castillo went 3-1 and the loss was Barboza in a fight that should have been a draw
Buchholz went 1-1
Mendes went 4-0

So their combined record was 14-4, with 2 losses to Barao as champ and Holloway a future champ.

Oviously the numbers don't tell the full story but 14-4 vs 8-14 for the five biggest names who fought more than once at TAM both under Bang as head coach and since then definitely shows their results are worse since, whereas TJ and Benavidez who stayed with Bang have gone a combined 8-1 in that time with the one loss being a split to the champ, granted Benavidez spent time with both camps in that time.

TAM's only success story since Ludwig left has been Cody Garbrandt and we don't have a comparison point as he never trained under Bang, there's a good chance he would also be undefeated if that was the case. Calvillo has a chance to be a success story too but too soon to know. It could be a case of the fighters I sampled getting older/going downhill etc but who knows.

All of that said there are a few fighters currently with Elevation who haven't shown real improvement, others have (Dober's a lot better than he was, but Thatch doesn't seem to be for example)

It'll be interesting to see how TAM and Elevation develop over the next few years and how their prospects go etc. TAM did build Garbrandt, but the guys who fought both under bang and then post bang at TAM clearly have gone downhill as fighters - granted some of that may be due to age rather than change in coaching but idk, sample size is small too.

I see what you are saying but I guess bias is making us weigh the less tangible factors differently. Individual performances don't tell the whole story, as you said, with each of the fighters having their own challenges and being in different phases of their career. I hardly weigh the losses at the twighlight of faber's career or the fact that Castillo is not a good fighter as proof of ludwig's influence or TAM's effectiveness. I can certainly concede that Ludwig may have more of an influence than I give him credit for, but in my opinion he ran very good in timing to both join tam and leave.

Time either promotes or exposes everyone, so I guess we will see.

There's not much information about modeling because I assume that's exactly where the edge comes from.

TBH i'm very surprised that someone hasn't made a very easy to use program/software that automatically collects information and analyzes it based on the filters the user selects. I mean think about it... the only people who truly got rich during the gold rush were the ones selling the shovels... not the ones doing the digging.

heh, kinda like the crypto market. the companies selling the super overpriced video cards due to insane demand by miners are making big $$$ with absolutely 0 risk. not much risk in selling shovels either.

Or cardrunners, piosolver etc xd