I can definitely see where you’re coming from and I agree; I only meant to point out that you will never escape the subjective nature of MMA scoring. I think you have a good thing going and I hope you keep it up and don’t burn yourself out.

Guess the ref wasn’t interested in seeing bone splintering in his cage.

Damn, this is annoying, Versus in the hotel has about a 7 to 8 second audio delay.

That is impressive work, Rami. It provides some very interesting data to look at and I’m glad there’s someone dedicated and patient enough to do it for all of our benefit.

I hear where you’re coming from. Just to clarify, HiPer and LoPer are groupings of different strike variations, not classifications of individual strikes. So for instance, every power strike to the head is a HiPer Strike, whereas a power strike to the body is only HiPer on the feet but not on the ground. This is simple event counting, so it’s no more subjective than our usual method of separating power strikes from jabs.

I think that’s what your real issue lays and I can’t disagree. The scorer has to make the decision of how to classify a strike, a submission attempt, or the level of damage. We can minimize, but not eliminate, that level of subjectivity.

I don’t see this as a fatal flaw. In fact, such limitations exist in nearly every sport. When looking at a pitcher’s Ball-to-Strike ratio, what you’re seeing is the subjective evaluation of that particular game’s umpire. He has guidelines, but it’s within his power to call any pitch he wants either a ball or a strike. The game can completely based turn on those decisions, but that doesn’t make every other baseball stat a subjective one. I don’t think an unavoidable amount of subjectivity devalues the entire enterprise. The key is to develop a certain level of trust between fans and scorers. Fans trust that umpires know what they’re talking about (most of the time), so they’ll accept a certain level of subjectivity. I don’t expect that level of trust to be built overnight, but in time, I would hope fans could place that level of trust in FightMetric’s scores as well.

Regarding subjectivity, I don’t think there’s any way where you can eliminate it from your HiPer and LoPer metrics. It simply cannot be done, and I don’t think adding extra explanation will really help.

Don’t get me wrong, I think you’re doing a great service for the fans and if you can figure out how to monetize what you’re doing, more power to you. I just think that it is misleading and irresponsible to deny that anything outside of simple event counting will always be subjective.

Who (or what) determines what a potential KO punch is? Who determines what a “catch” is? There is always a opinionated decision being made here and that is the definition of subjective.