Fightnomics

Fightnomics quantifies the underlying drivers of the world’s most exciting and fastest growing sport through deep analysis of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) competition. Part Freakonomics and part Moneyball, Fightnomics is a statistical spotlight on the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) and the fighters who compete in the Octagon.

Does size matter?

Is the Southpaw Advantage real for MMA?

Is it better to be young or experienced in a fight?

How is the UFC Tale of the Tape lying to us?

What makes a strike significant?

What about Ring Rust, Octagon Jitters, or the Home Cage Advantage?

Just how accurate are betting odds?

Theories about how MMA works get put to the test with a little bit of science, and a whole lot of numbers. Fightnomics is the deepest and most complete analysis to date of historical UFC data that answers common, yet hotly debated questions about the sport. The fight game will never quite look the same once you've learned what really matters in a cage fight, and even a few surprising things that don't.

Fightnomics does a fantastic job of tackling the myths of the sport and presenting new and potentially revolutionary theories. There's a ton of information to digest here, but it's worth sifting through to find each golden nugget of truth behind the numbers. Ultimate Fighting Championship just celebrated its 20th anniversary late last year, and with detailed analysis and modern statistics from books like Fightnomics leading the charge, the next 20 years look very bright indeed.     -Brian Hemminger, MMAOddsbreaker.com

Anything can happen in MMA, right? You've heard the cliché ad nauseum over the years. You've probably uttered it a few times yourself. And betting on MMA? Such a crapshoot. In a sport where everyone has a puncher's chance, you can lose your money literally seconds into a fight. Reed Kuhn is out to dispel this MMA myth through statistics and quantitative analysis with his new book Fightnomics. One of the many things he uncovered was a betting trend that could change the way we look at MMA gambling forever.     -Marc Raimondi, Fox Sports.com

"Basically, what the authors have done is to take MMA and break down every aspect of the sport to find out, based on the thousands of fights we have to reference now, what works, what doesn’t, and why that is so. In other words, this isn’t a book stating that “____” fight system is better because so-and-so trains it or that “_____” is a superior fighter because his training is done with shaolin monks or some nonsense like that. Rather is is an honest look at the numbers behind every aspect of MMA."     -The Rhino Den