 These Things I Believe
EVOLUTION
MMA is not evolving at anywhere near the pace many think.
I attribute the misconception to four causes: 1.) The UFC is getting a bigger percentage of the world's best fighters than it used to; 2.) Fighters get worse as they age (after a certain point) and therefore many top stars have been losing to mediocre opponents; 3.) Lack of critical thinking about promotional propaganda (promoters are concerned with hyping the future, even if it means devaluing the past); and 4.) Some small level of actual evolution, particularly in the area of weight cutting.
Guys like Rickson (basically a better version of Maia) and Saku would be champs today if they were young. Guys like Anderson Silva and Fedor Emelianenko have been near the top of the sport p4p since 2001 and 2002, even as both have gotten past their physical primes and one has moved up in weight.
WEIGHT
Many are completely clueless about the effects of size in a fight. I've seen allegedly respectable posters make outrageously stupid claims such as "GSP could beat Frank Mir and most or all LHWs" and "Anderson Silva would beat/be competitive with various top HWs." No. Throughout the long history fighting, there have been various examples of smaller guys doing well against bigger opponents but for every Roy Jones (an all-time great LHW who outpointed a very mediocre HW), there are 10 Bob Fosters (an even better LHW who failed miserably when he tried to matchup with good HWs). When you add all the other elements of MMA into the mix, the difference is magnified.
ORG HUGGERY
The identity of a guy's promoter is utterly irrelevant to anything. Tim Hague isn't automatically better than Andrei Arlovski just because he has a better promoter. Saying a guy should fight top competition if he wants to be ranked highly is reasonable; saying a guy should sign with a top promoter if he wants to be ranked highly is stupid org huggery. It's as stupid to say that BJ has to go to DREAM to maintain his spot atop the LW rankings as it is to say that Fedor has to go to the UFC.
EYEBALL VS. NUMBERS
Both eyeballs and numbers are needed to do a proper analysis of a fighter. Whether anyone wants to admit it or not, the fact is Elo makes accurate predictions in the form of "When the difference in score is X, the guy with the higher score will win Y% of the time."
It's also a fact that many of us predicted that Machida would have an easy time with Rashad despite similar Elo scores and have recognized Machida as a top p4p fighter for a long time despite the tired refrain that "he hasn't beaten a top X fighter." Elo doesn't account for the margin of victory and it is slow to account for the fact that a guy is shot so Machida was underrated and Rashad was overrated and it took eyeballs to know that.
On a related note, arbitrary cutoff dates in a quant analysis are logically indefensible and will lead to absurdities if universally applied that are not generally apparent in a comparison of two people. Elo accounts for changing ability levels somewhat, and eyeballs can handle the rest.
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