This coming weekend is UFC Fight Night: Overeem vs Volkov and I wanted to take a stab at utilizing some of the results from my machine learning and analytics based experiments to predict likely outcomes for the main event. To gather these results, I watched every fight of both fighters and mixed my own visual analysis with the statistical breakdowns I created for them. I am going to start my breakdown with Overeem and then to Volkov and alternate all the way until my conclusion, similar to the structure of an argumentative essay.

Starting with Alistair, I took data and only watched fights starting with his transition to the Elevation Fight Team camp which came after his loss to Curtis Blaydes by TKO. From a physical perspective, Alistair remains an imposing figure. Time has robbed him of some of his punching power but his knees in the clinch remain as deadly as they have ever been. Alistair’s chin was tested in every fight that I watched and unfortunately it is apparent that he doesn’t have the ability to take clean heavyweight strikes anymore. Father time comes for us all, but that doesn’t mean that Alistair’s time has come and gone. Elevation Alistair (as I have been calling him in my notes) reminds me a lot of Glover Texeira’s current light heavyweight title run.

Like Texeira, Overeem doesn’t have his youthful vigor anymore but he has replaced it with a wily, highly technical and balanced MMA approach. After his fight with Thiago Santos, Jon Anik called Texeira a “five tool fighter” referencing the five tool concept in baseball, essentially meaning that Texeira can do anything in the cage. Overeem has modified the Texeira formula while keeping the spirit. Whereas Texeira has opted for a “wear out my opponents with takedowns and then mercifully rear naked choke them into submission” approach, Overeem goes the power elbow route, raining them down from half and full guard while mixing in my personal favorite ground strike: the side control body knee. I saw Overeem purposely give up side control to get into his opponent's half guard on numerous occasions. He is clearly most comfortable striking from that position.

On to Volkov. I watched every UFC round of his and after the first couple ones, I came away unimpressed. Volkov’s striking defense had holes large enough to drive a truck through or more aptly a well timed Timothy Johnson uppercut that sent him to the mat and nearly led to a finish in his first UFC fight. Timothy Johnson and Roy Nelson both utilized a similar strategy to deal with Volkov’s length advantage (3 inches on Johnson and 8 on Nelson) by swinging wild power hooks, oftentimes while jumping, to try to score a flash KO. In the Johnson fight, Volkov took a lot of those shots in stride and avoided a few but against Nelson he was able to counter thanks to the additional 5 inches of reach advantage. My initial reading after watching these two fights was that Volkov was a technical striker that fought to win points over smaller, home run power shot throwing heavyweights.

After his first two fights, the UFC tested Volkov with two radically different opponents. First, he faced off against 7 foot tall dutch kick boxer Stefan Struve and then former heavyweight champ Fabricio Werdum. Struve and Volkov similarly utilize their length and striking to keep fighters at a distance but in their matchup, Volkov was clearly the superior distance striker despite giving up 5 inches in height. Volkov fought a solid fight and won by a punch flurry TKO. The Werdum fight was a bit less impressive to me. My model had Werdum winning rounds 1, 2 and 3 before some serious eye damage inflicted by an incidental Volkov eye poke on a stiff jab led to Werdum losing any ability to intelligently defend strikes coming from his right side. Volkov took advantage and TKO’d him in the first half of the fourth. Volkov demonstrated much superior balanced MMA striking skills and showed overall MMA improvement.

Overall, a consistent theme in my notes is that Volkov has enough power in his jab-straight combo to stun heavyweights but lacks the skill set of swarming in a way that can put away fighters. He consistently stunned his opponents in the first round, including all three rounds against Derrick Lewis, but was unable to seal the finish and in the case of Tim Johnson was knocked off his feet while trying. This outlines one of the two keys to the matchup for me. Volkov has not demonstrated the ability to consistently finish fights which limits his ceiling as a heavyweight contender. He doesn’t have one punch KO power so he needs to rely on his technique and medium power skills to stun fighters and get them up against the fence to land 2-3 clean shots that buckle the knees like he did against Struve or swarm them in stacked guard with clean downward strikes. But enough film study, let's get into the nitty-gritty of the data.

Utilizing my Judging Model as well as my new Fighter Accumulated Strategy and Tactics (FAST) model (article coming soon), I will be breaking down each fighter's past high level strategy and specific fight tactics and then investigating their ratings based upon their round win percentage as determined by the Judging Model.

NOTE: Unclassified refers to rounds that ended prior to the 2:30 mark of the round.

Nearly half (43%) of Overeem’s rounds I studied were classified as Balanced Grappling, meaning he mixed in grappling in equal parts with standing striking but focused more so on clinch/ground striking. He wins these rounds at a clip of 83%. This is a departure from our expectation of how Overeem fights as the dutch kick boxer is more well known for upright striking than ground fighting. Now onto how his opponents fought him and how he fared.

Fighters chose to stand and trade with Overeem 64% of the time which is extremely interesting considering the fear that striking with him used to inspire in heavyweights around the world. Now, Overeem wins these rounds at a rate of 55% which means that trying to outstrike him is roughly a 50/50 proposition from a data standpoint. However, he only fared well in 1 of the 4 rounds where an opponent opted for a Balanced Striking approach which, as we will see in the next paragraph, doesn’t mean much for this fight.

Volkov overwhelmingly fights upright as a striking specialist in an astonishing 69% of his rounds and wins them at a higher rate, 61%, than Overeem. A cursory analysis of the data would say that Overeem should avoid standing and trading with Volkov as he is more proficient than Alistair at this current stage of his career. I would predict that Volkov is going to try and stay upright while Overeem will try to take him to the ground and mix in clinch work to bridge the striking gap. Not groundbreaking stuff of course but the numbers and my intuition both point to this.

While the data at first glance doesn’t point to positive results for Overeem attempting a Balanced Grappling strategy on Volkov, I think this is a misreading of the data. What I see is a massive binary: in nearly 80% of Volkov's rounds, he either spends almost the entire round on his feet or entirely being controlled in clinch/ground situations. Grappling Heavy strategy means over 90% of round time was in a control position and Striking Heavy over 90% in standing time. The difference between winning and losing against Volkov is statistically determined on whether or not you take him down. We saw in his fight with Curtis Blaydes just how devastating that strategy is to his chances of winning. Volkov has no answer in bottom position and essentially just tries to stand up which exerts a lot of energy. Overeem should take a page out of his teammate Blaydes' strategic playbook in this one. Let's take a deeper dive into the fight tactics employed by Overeem and Volkov.

NOTE: I reduced the full table for readability

What jumps out right away is that Overeem needs to be on top, raining punches and elbows, or he’s essentially toast in this matchup. Since joining Elevation, Overeem hasn’t won a round where he wasn’t ground and pounding in top control. That is a narrow margin of error for Overeem’s chances of winning.

Volkov profiles tactically as a very well rounded, winning striker. He doesn’t have an offensive grappling repertoire but makes up for it with his exemplary striking. Honestly, not much to say here, the numbers speak for themselves. Volkov profiles like a fighter that wants to strike Overeem at range and keep the fight out of the clinch to avoid Overeem’s fantastic trips and throws that he employs to devastating effect. Volkov's jab-straight power combined with his effective control of range spells a problem for Alistair if he can't force him to grapple.

So what’s the bottom line? Volkov stands out to me statistically as the favorite which FanDuel backs by having him as a -192 favorite upon writing this. I see Volkov as the favorite because, probabilistically, he has more paths to victory. Volkov’s striking arsenal and winning percentage are superior to Overeem’s statistical deficits in these areas at the present stage of his career. Overeem is going to need to put Volkov’s back against the cage or canvas and chip away at his cardio to have any chance at victory but Volkov’s excellent jab and smooth kickboxing/karate skills will make that a tough task. If Overeem can thread the needle to his most dominant current skills, Volkov will be in for a long night and a likely TKO from ground strikes.

While it may seem like I am going back on what I said above, I believe Overeem wins this fight. Volkov may have more paths to victory but Alistair's is the one he has been employing most often since joining Elevation and has proven to be dominant at. I predict he threads the needle and employs the modified Blaydes strategy and puts Volkov away with a TKO in the later rounds due to combined damage.

To me, the best value bet strategies in this fight are:

As previously discussed, Overeem's route to victory is through as much ground and pound as possible. The most likely outcomes of this strategy to me are either a KO/TKO in the later rounds or Volkov surviving the onslaught but losing on points. I believe the gambling strategies above are ideal for profiting off the uncertainty from the sportsbook regarding the matchup.