Picking Winners

There's something that alot of hardcore MMA fans don't get when it comes to looking at the outcome of fights, it's something that even alot of fighters don't get.

When you are making fight predictions, you have to look at two things: what should happen and what could happen.

For instance: going into Gabriel Gonzaga vs Mirko "CroCop" Filipovic, Gonzaga could have KO'd CroCop, we saw him KO two of his other opponents in the UFC (Jordan and Scherner), but no one expected him to. When I was looking at the possible outcomes for that fighter I thought of it like this:

CroCop SHOULD win the standup.

Gonzaga SHOULD win on the ground.

Gonzaga was capable of finishing the fight in CroCop's arena, he had the power to do that, where as CroCop didn't really have a snowball's chance in hell at submitting Gonzaga or outgrappling him.

So:

Gonzaga COULD win the standup.

CroCop COULD NOT win the grappling.

People will tell you that anything can happen. Yes, anything can happen, but there's a reason why bizarre things tend not to happen. When I say what "could happen" I think of, given a fighters history, what he's capable of.

For those who watched the Couture v Gonzaga fight, you have to understand how hard a fight that is to bet on. Here's why:

Gonzaga SHOULD win the standup.

Couture SHOULD win the grappling.

But:

Couture COULD (and did) win the standup.

Gonzaga COULD (but didn't) win the grappling.

There's so much up in the air as to the dimensions of that kind of a fight. Both fighters can win in both places. My suggestion is to never bet more than play money on those kinds of fights, but always watch those matchups closely. They are the ones that are exciting because no one really has any clue what is going to happen until, finally, it does.

For Those Who Don't Know About MMA

Mixed martial arts is the ultimate combat sport, with martial artists and athletes from all corners of the world and with styles that ranging from Muay Thai kickboxing to Brazillian Jiu-jitsu to wrestling.

Since the nineties mixed martial arts has spread like wildfire, with organizations developing in the United States (most notably the UFC), Canada (TKO, among others), Russia (RINGS), East Asia (PRIDE) as well as competitions across the world established to showcase different parts of the mixed martial arts fighters' styles, like K-1 Kickboxing and the Abu Dhabi Combat Club.

Over the last something-teen years the sport has made a place for NCAA wrestling champions like former UFC champion and collegiate wrestling legend Kevin Randleman and current UFC heavyweight champ Randy "The Natural" Couture and Olympic gold medalists like Hidehiko Yoshida (Judo) and Rulon Gardner (wrestling), as well as giving the world an opportunity to figure out who the greatest martial artist in the world really is.

The leader in the sport, the Ultimate Fighting Championship, is regularly the highest grossing pay per view show in the nation with their semi-monthly events and extremely successful cable television show The Ultimate fighter. If you haven't seen or heard about the UFC, I don't know what to tell you, only that you must not Sports Illustrated at the rock that you live under, because the UFC was on the cover of a recent issue.

At this particular moment, for those new to the sport, the man who holds that title is Fedor Emelianenko, probably best known just by his first name. Other elite heavyweight fighters include Mirko "CroCop" Filipovic, Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, "The Baby-Faced Assassin" Josh Barnett, Randy Couture (or as I like to call him, Rocky 2.0), Andrei "The Pitbull" Arlovski and Gabriel Gonzaga.

I'm not surprised if you haven't heard of Fedor, because he lacks the backing from the marketing machine that is the Ultimate Fighting Championship, but the UFC has made stars out of many fighters from it's lightheavyweight division including Chuck Liddell and Tito Ortiz, who have appeared on a handful of prime-time television shows.

The overall success of the sport is why I'm here, as well as to keep everybody informed about what is going on in the sport today.