With all the controversy surrounding the main event of UFC 86...I hate to beat a dead horse. However, I haven't really ran across an article that talks about the quantity of strikes compared to the quality of strikes that fighter's land in a match. In the main event of UFC 86...fightmetric.com indicates that Forrest Griffin landed 113 strikes compared to 73 for Rampage Jackson. This match up is a classic example of when less is more...and more is less.
What we have to take into account is which strikes landed have the highest % rate of ending a fight. Of the 113 strikes landed by Forrest...35 of them were leg kicks. Whereas of the 73 Rampage landed...46 were headshots. Throughout the history of MMA, I think it's fair to say that it's pretty rare for a fight to end via leg kicks. Although I can think of instances such as Jardine/Whitehead...or Cro Cop/Yoshida...Jardine and Cro Cop have some of the nastiest leg kicks ever. Which is another point that judges should be aware of...I mean a kick from Cro Cop simply would do more damage than say a kick from Justin McCully. Basically, what I'm saying is that if a fighter is landing a lot of inside leg kicks doing minimal damage...and his opponent is landing huge power shots to the head. I think the fighter that's landing more power shots to the head should weigh more in the judging when compared to the fighter landing alot of kicks to his opponents legs.
Simply because the shots to the head have proven to have had a higher % of ending the fight. This is just another aspect in which judges must take into consideration...and also let's us know that MMA still has a lot of areas in which it must improve upon. Here's to all MMA judges actually learning how to do there jobs correctly.
(I'm aware that fightmetric can be biased by acknowledging if a strike landed or not...or was considered a 'power shot' or not)
Loading comments...