Let’s be honest: Every now and then it’s fun to get down into the nitty-gritty statistics and see if we can’t perform some MMAth. It helps us analyze future fights and make predictions based on previous history. Fans of all sports do it, so why can’t we? It can help us look for potential trends in a fighter as well. So, with thanks to Sherdog and FightMetric.com for the raw data, let’s examine the main event of the upcoming Ultimate Fighter 18 Finale: The trilogy bout pitting Nate Diaz vs. Gray Maynard.
While Nate Diaz is actually the more well-rounded fighter here, strong wrestlers have always been his kryptonite. However, in terms of MMA wrestling, I wouldn’t put Gray Maynard as an exceptionally strong example in terms of offense. He would have to land more than 50% of his takedown attempts in order to qualify for that. Still, with Gray’s win over Nate being an extremely close split decision, and Diaz’s victory over him in the TUF Season 5 semi-finals was by guillotine choke. While I don’t think either man has picked up too many new skills since they last did battle, I honestly feel like Nate has put in more work. With that, a 6″ reach advantage, and one of the highest submission completion rates in the UFC, I expect Nate to catch the submission victory once again.
Justin Pierrot is MMASucka.com's resident musicologist and TUF aficionado. When not looking after his family or writing his weekly pieces, he's making music as Stormland or building Gundam models.
