(“In my unbiased opinion as an MMA journalist, Chael Sonnen is the #1-ranked fighter at *all* weight classes. In addition, he has the biggest arm and does the most harm.” Photo via Fuel TV.)

For the first time ever, the UFC will publish fighter ranking lists in each of their weight divisions. The new rankings will be generated by FightMetric, in collaboration with a wide range of media members. Here’s the scoop, via a press release on UFC.com:

FightMetric®, the official statistics provider of the Ultimate Fighting Championship® (UFC®), will continue to enhance fans experience by providing UFC Fighter Rankings. UFC Fighter Rankings by FightMetric will poll opinions from sports media worldwide and will be recognized by the UFC and integrated into its broadcast and featured on UFC.com. Voting will be open to media immediately after each live event with results made available to UFC.com within 24 hours.

“We are thrilled to have UFC recognize our fighter rankings and to have them hosted on UFC.com, as well as incorporated into event broadcasts. FightMetric has worked closely with the UFC for several years as an industry-leader in MMA statistics. Sports fans are accustomed to seeing performance data and rankings on their favorite baseball, football and soccer players, and now we can engage UFC fans on a similar level,” said FightMetric creator Rami Genauer.

“UFC Fighter Rankings are a great tool for new and existing fans alike to learn and better keep up with the fast pace of the UFC,” said UFC President Dana White. “We always look for opportunities to engage fans and media, allowing them to connect and voice their opinions, and this just one more way of doing that.”

(Click chart for full-size version.)

By Reed Kuhn, @Fightnomics

Other than Kenny Florian, who finishes fights? Let’s settle it once and for all. Using data provided by FightMetric, we looked at how every UFC fight ended from 2007 through the first half of 2012 — a total of 1438 total fights, excluding three flyweight contests — and then divvy’d it up by weight class to determine percentages for each method. For the first time ever, all these stats are in one place, in the chart above. Boom — you’ve just been databombed.

The conclusion: Size matters. Stoppages increase steadily by weight class; but while striking finish rates correlate strongly with increasing weight, submissions have a weaker, negative correlation. Keep in mind that bantamweights and featherweights have a short history in the UFC so far, so expect some possible smoothing out of those division trends over the next year.

Do any of these results surprise you? Next time the local Bullshido expert tells the bar that his favorite featherweight will finish the next fight, bet him the next round of drinks that it’ll go to the cards.

For more science and stats of MMA, follow @Fightnomics on Twitter or on Facebook. See MMA analytical research at www.fightnomics.com.

(Dan Miragliotta explains to Guida the maximum amount of miles allowed to run in the octagon without penalty.) 

After a brief hiatus, Dana White has returned with the daily dose of heartbreak that is the Danavlog to remind us all of the downsides of being a f*cking fighter. Thankfully, not all of us take the phrase as literally as Brazilians do. But the main lesson we took away from today’s episode is simple: what you don’t pay in gym fees, you will more than make up for in blood. Nick Catone, Joey Gambino, and Ross Pearson were just a few of the men to walk away from their bouts with some gruesome lacerations and another (or in Gambino’s case, a first) loss on their record. A tough day at the office indeed.

“Boring,” and “sucked” were just a couple of words that White used to describe the five round affair between Clay Guida and Gray Maynard, a sentiment that most fans seemed to agree with when all was said and done. And regardless of who you thought won that fight, you could probably understand a little bit of Gray’s frustration with the Steve Prefontainian conundrum that Guida brought to the octagon. This frustration became all the more apparent when the two met backstage, where some less than positive remarks were exchanged between the two camps. Oddly enough, it all began when Guida uncharacteristically complained about the judges decision, despite the fact that Napoleon was closer to conquering Russia than Guida ever was to finishing that fight, or even attempting to for that matter.

Video after the jump. 

(Brazilian boy can’t get no love? / Props: enlapelea.com)

Fabio Maldonado should have learned his lesson in his fight against Kyle Kingsbury last June — if the judges refuse to count body punches as “effective damage,” you might as well just start head-hunting and grunting and hope for the best. Once again, the Brazilian light-heavyweight put on a body-shot clinic in his bout against Igor Pokrajac at last night’s UFC event, and once again he wound up with a unanimous decision loss, with one judge inexplicably handing all three rounds to the Croatian. Many observers called this one a robbery, and you can understand why if you look a little closer at the striking totals. According to FightMetric…

- Round 1: Maldonado out-landed Pokrajac 36-6 in significant strikes, 47-16 overall.

- Round 2: Maldonado out-landed Pokrajac 26-13 in significant strikes, 60-18 overall.

- Round 3: Maldonado out-landed Pokrajac 36-17 in significant strikes, 59-30 overall.

- Overall: Maldonado’s success-rate for significant strikes was 72% (98 of 137), compared to 45% for Pokrajac (36 of 80). The final overall striking total was 166-64 in Maldonado’s favor.

“Where I come from, people who lose close fights retire.” Props: UFC.com

While watching UFC 143 from the comfort of my favorite dive bar last night, I knew that MMA fans would be waging war on the internet over the fights that went the distance. Between the two point deduction that cost “Bruce Leroy” his fight against Edwin Figueroa and Josh Koscheck’s close fight with the “undeserving” Mike Pierce, I knew that I could expect a long-winded, philosophical debate over what constitutes a fight and what doesn’t- whether abstract concepts like “control” and “aggression” mean more than punches thrown, and whether takedowns earned and stuffed negate an inferior striking display. Naturally, this debate would include a lot of ad hominems and off topic ranting, because that’s just par for the course online.

And that was before the main event of the evening, which saw Carlos Condit earn a close decision over Nick Diaz. Carlos Condit used backward and lateral footwork while outstriking Nick Diaz, yet many fans felt that Nick Diaz should have won the fight. Before the fight even ended, the debate already began on whether “Octagon control” necessarily means “the guy moving forward”, and whether counter-punchers should automatically be considered less aggressive than their opponents. Judging from the comments sections of today’s articles, that debate won’t be ending any time soon.

Benjamin Disraeli once said that there are three types of lies: Lies, damned lies and statistics. For the time being, let’s move our arguments about last night’s fights past the first two. Let’s now turn our focus towards the statistics from last night’s close decisions. FightMetric’s breakdowns of Riddle vs. Martinez, Figueroa vs. Caceres, Koscheck vs. Pierce and, of course, Diaz vs. Condit have been published, and are available after the jump.

Aside from being the decisionest decisioner who ever decisioned, UFC welterweight contender Jon Fitch also holds the record for the most total strikes landed in the Octagon — a staggering 1973, according to the new UFC Official Records page on FightMetric.com. Georges St. Pierre is a close second to Fitch with 1924 total strikes, but comes in first on the “Significant Strikes Landed” leaderboard with 892; Jon Fitch isn’t even in the top ten on that one.

Also surprising: Because of their multiple title fights and frequent decisions, Frank Edgar and Sean Sherk have average fight times of over 15 minutes. Plus, Anderson Silva is just one knockdown away from catching Chuck Liddell’s record of 14 KDs, Cheick Kongo has the fifth-best takedown accuracy in the UFC, and the hardest-to-hit fighter in UFC history isn’t Lyoto Machida or Georges St. Pierre — it’s TUF 4 vet Pete Spratt, who only ate 0.89 shots per minute during his 3-4 stint in the Octagon. (Yes, GSP is currently in second place on that list too.) Check out a few more notable FightMetric charts after the jump, and see the rest right here.

MMA Madness gets all mathematical ‘n shit with UFC 79′s Liddell/Silva fight, analyzing the data from Fightmetric, the world’s first comprehensive MMA statistics system. The most interesting part is the round-by-round chart at the bottom of the page which shows how many of each type of strike the fighters landed to each section of their opponent’s body, but the breakdown is fairly insightful on its own. Some of the observations:

— “…it took Silva longer to throw his first punch (45 seconds) than it did for him to earn five of his 31 career victories.

— Although two judges scored the fight 30-27, “FightMetric clearly gives [the second] round to Silva by a score of 158-87, even after Liddell’s score is bolstered for the damage inflicted in the round that opened a cut on Silva’s right eyebrow.”

— “Silva’s jab-to-power strike ratio is absurd. Based on FightMetric’s database of statistics, the average fighter throws about 1.5 jabs for every power strike at distance, a ratio of three-to-two. Silva threw more than 2.5 power strikes for every jab thrown, a five-to-two ratio that is at odds with most fighters’ striking styles.”

Overall, Liddell wins the fight by a Fightmetric total score of 340-265. If you want to kill your productivity at work today, go to Fightmetric and start clicking around. Particularly notable is the insanely-detailed breakdown of the Michael Bisping/Matt Hamill match at UFC 75, which argues that Bisping did sneak off with rounds 2 and 3, though the first round was so lopsided that he would have lost if the fight was judged on total scoring, and not the outdated-for-MMA 10-point must system.