Michael Bisping's Opponents Records When They First Fought

I've done this for a few fighters now, and it is definitely a noticeable trend. Probably for the reasons you described.

not even every top fighter, every fighter in general. almost nobody loses a lot early in their career and halfway through magically start to win.

I'm guessings its because in MMA, especially in UFC, you aren't fighting cans, if you aren't a can. You are fighting your equal.

Thank you! I'm glad you enjoy it.

You're right, additional context would be great. I'm trying to space it out to not overwhelm anybody, and also because doing several fighters at once requires a lot of work. What I may do is create a post after I've done several and compare them then. It'll be easier since the data will already be available.

Maybe I'll add him to the list and profile him someday.

This man knows

The expression this way kind of makes sense. Maybe it's like - no one is going to want to miss what I'm about to say, dear audience, therefore, without further goodbye...

Whoops, little bit of a malapropism there. Thanks for pointing that out.

Anyway, I've always thought Bisping's career was a near-masterclass of matchmaking by the UFC. They shelved him for TUF far too much and the Jorge Rivera and Mayhem fights were too far a drop and basically a wasted year, but otherwise the matchmaking in his career up to the title is basically perfect.

The favourite won virtually every fight of his career before the title fight. He got a few less difficult fights and then got a real hard test. If he failed the test, he got set up to probably win the next fight. He didn't lose two fights in a row until the final two of his career. Perfect.

Modern matchmakers could learn a lot from this. If they had matched up Bisping 10 years ago the way they match up Till now, his career would look radically different.

This is awesome, never realized this about his career. Obviously, it's not always as simple as put the two most perfectly matched fighters together, but whatever they did to determine his matches would make for a great start to begin the process.

I really held this opinion too for a long time. The very debatable win over hammill thrown into the mix showed even more favoritism for the count.

He then went on to fight a murderers row and lose an eye for his never say die mentality. By the end of his career bisping won me over massively and his win over Cockhold mighr actually be my favorite moment in the sport. Believe you me Buddeh we won't see another Bisping for a long time if ever.

No conclusion really. Just some more illuminating data about a fighter's career. I do this mostly because it's fun.

Bisping was the ultimate gatekeeper

My bad, didn't mean to disturb the rumor mill/meme-fest.

In all seriousness though, thank you very much for the compliment. Glad you enjoyed it.

That was you! Saved me the trouble of looking through my messages so I could reach out and thank you. Hope you enjoyed it.

That's one thing I wonder about when I look at this sort of thing. It's a pretty consistent trend to see the post fight records as paltry compared to pre-fight. I've seen it pointed out that a lot of that has to do with post-title contenders having to more consistently fight top notch competition, which is absolutely true. Sometimes though, I can't help but think a brutal loss to a champ does something to a contender that alters the trajectory of the rest of their career.

Seems a bit of a stretch to say he broke them. Henderson was already old, GSP was doing in it for 1 fight, and Cung Le was also old at that point also.

Not saying he didn't break some opponents, but those three I wouldn't pick.

Man pillow fists legacy has been totally rewritten by new fans on here lol

All great points. Maybe I'm reaching here, but I think the reality is a blend of a few of the above reasons, or in the case of some fighters, maybe all of the above.

I'm sure we can all agree some fighters are not as mentally strong as others, and a bad loss at the top level of competition can rattle them in ways they struggle to recover from. Not to mention, the best of the best often can expose the flaws in their game for the rest of the world to see, and some guys aren't as good as others at fixing those flaws.

It's also true of course that a loss to someone at the top like Bisping could coincide with an overall decline. Those declines could really start anywhere, and it may be corollary in some cases rather than causal.

Lastly, once you've reached the top, the competition is of course going to be the hardest you can expect until you prove you can't hang with the best anymore. Provides more chances to lose.

In any event, I love the thoughtful conversation and am really glad you enjoyed this! Thanks for sharing your thoughts and for the kind words. If you have any ideas around other stats you enjoy, please let me know. I'm always open to considering new ideas.

That wasn't you, was it?

Thanks for following along. I'll add him to the list. It's getting kind of long now haha.

Fair point. May decide to drop that and favor some other angles of examination in the future. Thanks for your feedback!