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One of them was Jon Jones, the light heavyweight champion of the
Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), the premier MMA league.
In four weeks, Jones would be defending his title against Rashad
Evans, an expert ghter and his former training partner. To prepare
him, Jackson had set up a sparring session with Shawn "The Savage"
Jordan, a heavyset ghter from Baton Rouge.
Jones and Jordan met in the middle of the ring. Jordan threw rst.
Jones backpedaled and protected his face with his forearms.
"Look for that space, Jones!" Jackson hollered. "You. Do. Not let him
close those angles on you." Jordan threw a urry of blows. To me,
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Jones ducked under one st and whipped his right leg out in a short
arc. The kick missed. Jordan threw again. This time Jones dropped
down, icked his head to the side, and, leaping off one foot,
launched a ying jab followed by a knee to Jordan's midsection,
which landed with a wet . Jordan groaned and crumpled
onto the mat.
At the start, the two men stood a few feet apart. Jackson drew a
circle. The node had three edges, or moves that Jackson was
training Jones to use. He could execute a leg kick, or a punch, or he
could shoot for a takedown (attempt to grab Jordan by the backs of
his legs and drive him into the ground). But the initial node was not
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Since 1992, when he opened his rst gym, Jackson has been using
math to inform his training techniques. Unlike other MMA coaches,
he continually collects data while watching live bouts, logs old ght
videos to determine which moves work and when, and lls
notebooks with game trees to determine the optimal nodes for
various situations in a match. "I've always seen the ring like a lab," he
says. "I've tried to think rigorously, logically."
"I've always seen the ring like a lab," Jackson says. "I try to think
logically."Jackson's attempts to impose some measure of order on
the primal, violent world of MMA mirror a larger movement within
the sport. Science may not be civilizing cage ghting, but it is
re ning it. Specialty rms compile detailed statistics on matches.
MMA pros appear on ESPN rigged head to toe with sensors and
monitors that measure their striking power and speed. Academics
are writing peer-reviewed articles on subjects such as the
physiology of top ghters and the role that fear plays in the
Octagon. And now ghters, most of them trained by Jackson, are
beginning to use this data and analysis to become ever more
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The very rst UFC event took place before a crowd of about 7,800
in a Denver auditorium in 1993. It was an odd spectacle. Karate
masters clashed with boxers. Kickboxers dueled with sumo
wrestlers. There were few real rules.
Among the many die-hard UFC fans was Rami Genauer, a journalist
based in Washington, D.C. Genauer had read , Michael
Lewis's best seller about Oakland Athletics general manager Billy
Beane and his statistics-driven approach to player evaluation. He
dreamed of analyzing mixed martial arts in the same way.
type of strike (power leg versus leg jab, for instance) and the
nishing move (rear naked choke versus guillotine, and so on). The
process took hours, but the end result was something completely
new to the sport: a comprehensive data set.
Of cials liked having Genauer's ght data, and when the UFC began
spif ng up its broadcasts with more graphics and statisticspart of
an effort to make MMA seem like a real sport instead of a series of
cage brawlsit hired FightMetric as its statistics provider. Genauer
quit his job and opened an of ce in D.C.
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real time. The UFC uses some of the data for graphics during
broadcasts and on its website. FightMetric goes into even greater
detail on its own website, presenting statistics over outlines of a
human body. Colored lines indicate the accuracy of each type of
strike, and boxes show which ground move, whether arm bar,
kimura lock or triangle choke, each ghter used to try to induce a
submission. The analysis is strangely disconnected from the
violence of the Octagona savage ght broken down into simple,
neat gures.
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Jackson would have two evenly matched ghters spar 10, 15, even
20 times in a row. Waiting nearby, notepad in hand, he would
assiduously track which moves worked in the greatest number of
situations. Unlike most trainers, he held no sentimental attachment
to any speci c moves. If he found that a ying sidekick didn't
consistently do enough damage, he'd stop teaching it.
By the early '90s Jackson had incorporated his results into his own
homegrown martial art, which he dubbed Gaidojutsu"way of the
street," roughly, in Japanese. Gaidojutsu combined rudimentary
striking with grappling and wrestling. At the time, it was rare to
blend ghting stylesmost ghters trained in a single discipline. But
Jackson's students relished the chance to play mix-and-match, and
his stable of trainees grew. A few of them persuaded him to let them
compete in bare-knuckle tournaments, where they dominated their
undisciplined opponents. By the time the UFC came around,
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But he knew the UFC would be a far cry from the bare-knuckle
bouts. He'd need to further re ne his methods. One person he relied
on for help was Jim Dudley, a close friend and mentor who also
happened to be a mathematics lecturer at the University of New
Mexico. Dudley gave him private math lessons in the desert, giving
him assignments from books on subjects such as discrete
mathematics and discussing how he might apply math in an MMA
match.
All of these notes contain usable data. Analyzing his game trees
shows him the best moves to make at different points in a match,
while logs of his ghters' and their opponents' past matches help
him predict how long an upcoming ght is likely to last, when in each
round the opponent will strike and what moves he'll make. It's an
advantage no other trainer yet has.
In early April Jon Jones defended the light heavyweight belt against
Rashad Evans. The ghters were once friends who trained together
under Jackson, but they'd had a falling out. In the weeks before the
bout, they spent plenty of time trash-talking each other in the
media. The ght was a true grudge match, as the UFC billed it, and
by the time Jones and Evans climbed into the Octagon at Philips
Arena in Atlanta, anticipation (and the noise level) was at a peak.
The ght opened slow. The ghters danced around each other
warily. Evans, shorter and stockier than Jones, snapped away with
his jab. Jones slipped around him, throwing a mix of "superman"
punches (a punch executed while leaping forward) and ying knees.
Near the end of the rst round, Evans caught Jones with his foot,
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sending him off balance. The bell rang. Jackson was waiting for
Jones in the corner, a red cap pulled over his shaved head. His gaze
was intent. He knew Evans had a superb defense and fast hands,
limiting Jones's options. He began constructing a game tree in his
mind. In the rst node, the two men were squared off against each
other. Jones could punch away, but Evans would block most of the
blows. He needed to move to another node, one with more edges.
Toward the end of the next round, Jones, heeding Jackson's advice,
squared up against Evans and extended both hands, open-gloved.
Evans matched him, and for a moment it looked as if the two men
were about to play patty-cake. This was the node that Jackson was
looking for. Evans was momentarily exposed. In dazzlingly quick
succession, Jones threw a right elbow, then a left, then another
right. Evans wobbled, and Jones surged forward with a knee and a
left hook.
By the third round, Jones had his opponent on the defensive. Evans
turned one way, and Jones was there. Turned another, and there he
was again. In the fourth, Jones buried his knee in Evans's stomach,
and the crowd, more than 15,000 strong, roared its approval.
only ran Evans ragged around the ring, but he also doubled his
output, continually nding the node where he could throw the most
blows.
That means Jackson will have to work harder than ever to stay on
top of the sport. But when I asked him how important winning is to
him, he got quiet. "Never put a node for victory," he said nally.
"That doesn't mean we don't want to win. I want my guys to be
thinking about trying to get to the strongest position they can, with
the most edges, over and over. Like any science, it's more about the
process than it is the outcome."
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