MMA Fight Decisions

Decisions for MMA fights with judges scores. Can be used to explore judge agreement/consistency.

Motivation

The data is derived largely from publicly available data from ESPN (https://www.espn.com/mma/) and the MMA (http://mmadecisions.com/).

Data

Each row is a different fight (5000 fights included).

mma_decisions.csv

Variable	Explanation	Example
date	date of fight in year - month - day format	2012-02-26, 2019-10-06, etc.
event	name of the MMA event	UFC 31: Locked & Loaded, UFC 32: Showdown in the Meadowlands, etc.
arena	arena where event was held	Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort, Continental Airlines Arena, etc.
city	city where event took place	Atlantic City, New Jersey, USA, etc.
fighter1	last name of the first fighter	Soto, VanZandt, etc.
fighter2	last name of the second fighter	Rivera, Delboni, etc.
result_type	decision scoring terminology	Unanimous (all agree), Split (at least one judge votes for each fighter), Majority (two judges votes for a fighter, one judge votes for a draw)
judge1	last name of the judge	1 Chatfield, Collett, etc.
judge1_score1	judge 1’s score for fighter 1	30, 28, etc.
judge1_score2	judge 1’s score for fighter 2	27, 29, etc.
judge2	last name of the judge 2	Chatfield, Collett, etc.
judge2_score1	judge 2’s score for fighter 1	30, 28, etc.
judge2_score2	judge 2’s score for fighter 2	27, 29, etc.
judge3	last name of the judge 3	Chatfield, Collett, etc.
judge3_score1	judge 3’s score for fighter 1	30, 28, etc.
judge3_score2	judge 3’s score for fighter 2	27, 29, etc.
winner	winner of the match (name)	Rivera, VanZandt, Draw, etc.
winner2	winner of the match (fighter number)	fighter1 or fighter2
judge1_margin	difference in judge 1’s score for fighters 1 and 2	30-27 = 3, 28-29 = -1, etc.
judge2_margin	difference in judge 2’s score for fighters 1 and 2	30-27 = 3, 28-29 = -1, etc.
judge3_margin	difference in judge 3’s score for fighters 1 and 2	30-27 = 3, 28-29 = -1, etc.
judge1_perc	percentage difference in judge 1’s score for fighters 1 and 2	-11.11%, 10%, etc.
judge2_perc	percentage difference in judge 2’s score for fighters 1 and 2	-11.11%, 10%, etc.
judge3_perc	percentage difference in judge 3’s score for fighters 1 and 2	-11.11%, 10%, etc.
rounds	number of rounds in the fight	3 or 5
judge1_dev	deviation in judge 1’s score from colleague’s average scores	2, 0.5, etc.
judge2_dev	deviation in judge 2’s score from colleague’s average scores	2, 0.5, etc.
judge3_dev	deviation in judge 3’s score from colleague’s average scores	2, 0.5, etc.
judge1_out	outcome of judge 1’s decision	fighter1, draw, fighter2
judge2_out	outcome of judge 2’s decision	fighter1, draw, fighter2
judge3_out	outcome of judge 3’s decision	fighter1, draw, fighter2
agreement	agreement status of the three judges	Agree, Disagree (all differ), judge3 (only judge 3 differs), etc.

Questions

1. How well do judges agree on the fight outcome?

2. How much variability is there in judges scores for fights?

References

The data is derived largely from publicly available data from ESPN (https://www.espn.com/mma/) and the MMA (http://mmadecisions.com/)