Heatmaps: The next frontier in MMA stats
“if we can quantify those pieces of information, then we’ve added another layer onto the sport… Motion tracking is the wave of the future… This is really the next frontier.”
Rami Genauer, founder of Fightmetric, has for years been working on a new representation for what happens in a fight, beyond the strikes, takedowns, submission attempts etc that we are all used to. Now he is debuting the next frontier in MMA stats, something he has worked on for years – heatmaps.
“We’re tracking the location and movement of the fighters and the heatmap is a nice way of plotting that on a graph or plane, so you can display frequency of time spent in a position in an easy way for people to consume,” he said to Luke Thomas for MMAFighting.com.
“First and foremost, the important thing is to collect as much good data as we can. Ultimately, we’re trying to explain the sport and explain the fights. There’s going to be fights for which the strikes may not tell the story, the takedowns may not tell the story. One of the stories could be the use of space and the motion or direction of motion. We’ve seen that quite a bit. Regardless of who is landing the strikes, the fighter who is moving forward is considered winning. Judges certainly value it. I think fans and commentators do as well.
“So, if we can quantify those pieces of information, then we’ve added another layer onto the sport. We can understand it better. We can say there is tremendous value to being the fighter who is moving forward.”
Conor McGregor vs. Dennis Siver • UFC Fight Night 59 • Jan 18, 2015
“McGregor-Siver is a great example of center control success. What you see is the donut. There’s the center of the Octagon and Siver’s got a big blank spot. You take a look at McGregor’s and he’s filled in the donut hole, so all of his orange and yellow are right there smack in the center, where Siver is exactly not. It’s very, very difficult to win a fight from the outside if you’re opponent is constantly making you circle and circle because you can never set. You can never throw anything with power, as opposed to the guy who is stationary who can dart forward at a moment’s notice.”
T.J. Dillashaw vs. Joe Soto • UFC 177 • Aug 30, 2014
“They didn’t spend any time against the fence. This is all spent in free space. They didn’t cover the entire Octagon. You can see they still concentrated in the north-by-northwest portion, but at the same time, they’re constantly moving. You can see the total distance traveled between is 3,036 feet. That’s so far the highest we’ve seen combined in a round between two fighters.”
Cat Zingano vs. Amanda Nunes • UFC 178 • May 23, 2015
“That was the shortest combined distance in a complete round between the two of them. They moved 186 feet. Zingano spent 30 of them getting across the cage. So, if you take out those 30, you’ve got 156 between the two in five minutes.”
“Motion tracking is the wave of the future. Basketball’s been doing it for several years. MLB did it in a more comprehensive way than they have in the past starting this season. The NFL introduced it in some games last year where they’ve got a chip in the shoulder pads of players. They can take a look at these things as well, like what it means if a corner is playing a guy off the line or giving him more space.”
“This is really the next frontier. If looking at all the performance metrics was one phase, the next phase is turning those two dimensional statistics into three dimensions. Now you can look at the outcomes or what happened, but also how did everybody get there? It should hopefully complete the story a little bit more, maybe explain those numbers better than they are in the abstract.”