...OH, ONE MORE THING - PLEASE BOOKMARK US & VISIT DAILY!
By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief
If you tuned in on Wednesday for UFC on Fuel TV, you may have noticed something new to the broadcast - the use of live stats displayed during the fights. It was the next evolution in the UFC's partnership with FightMetric.com, as they provided live, unofficial stats for commentators Jon Anik and Kenny Florian to muse on during fights and for fans at home to see as well.
It's something a lot of fans have wanted to see during fights in the past, and something that's going to continue to be ingrained into broadcasts going forward, according to UFC President Dana White.
"I told you, a lot of things in production we're changing when we got into this new deal, and one of them is stats," White said after UFC on FUEL TV 1 (transcribed by MMAJunkie.com). "We've been giving tons of stats – not only during the fight, but before the fight we give a ton of [stats] too."
"There's just so much more to MMA. We're just giving more information."
Of course, in a sport like MMA, simple striking stats don't always tell the whole story of what's happening in a fight. It's a nice visual to have for fans, and does provide a little more to the broadcast, but White doesn't believe it's something that will have any sway with judges who may see it live as well.
"They do it in boxing," White said. "It's no different than boxing. But the difference between this and boxing is the amount of strikes (landed) have nothing to do with what goes on in MMA. If that's swaying your decision, you definitely don't [expletive] belong here. If they're turning around (to look at the screens) and then going, 'OK,' and writing their score down, they don't belong here."
"The punch stats don't always tell who's winning the fight. We just need guys in there that know exactly what they're doing and can judge. And let's be honest - to be kind of fair to them - judging is somewhat subjective into what you think. But the bottom line is, you've got to go on damage. You've got to go on - there's a lot of different things to score on, and judges should know what it is."
Penick's Analysis: Having live stats during the fights are another nice production tweak to continue bringing MMA broadcasts into the realm of mainstream sports. Stats are a huge part of other professional sport broadcasts, and being able to get in real time an idea of what each fighter is doing, from an offensive output standpoint, is great for fans. It's impossible to provide a complete picture of things with stats, but it does give a good idea of what you're seeing, and whether fighters are actually connecting on things or not. FightMetric does such a great job with what they do, and it's great to see them taking on an even larger role in the UFC.
DON'T GO YET... WE SUGGEST THESE MMATORCH ARTICLES, TOO!
Jamie Penick, editor-in-chief
(mmatorcheditor@gmail.com)
STAFF COLUMNISTS: Shawn Ennis - Jason Amadi
Frank Hyden - Rich Hansen
Chris Park - Matt Pelkey
Interested in joining MMATorch's writing team? Send idea for a theme to your column (for Specialist section) or area of interest (i.e. TV Reporter) along with a sample of writing to mmatorch@gmail.com.
