IRVINE, California (Aug. 14, 2010) – Two-time UFC heavyweight champion Tim “The Maine-iac” Sylvia’s comeback successfully continued tonight with a one-punch knockout of Paul “The Headhunter” Buentello for the Powerhouse World Promotions Heavyweight Championbship.

What is the one common fabric found in almost every recent controversial decision in MMA?  They were mostly striking affairs where grappling didn't factor in.  The schematic above depicts an interesting exrescence of the unified rules resulting from fights that are mostly handled on the feet; meaning grappling and takedowns are nonexistent or mostly inconsequential.

Let's apply Pareto's "80/20" principle to this examination of the final result when the unified scoring criteria are applied to striking matches. Pareto’s principle came about in the early 1900's when Pareto, an Italian economist, identified that 20% of the people accounted for 80% of the wealth.  The 80/20 rule has proven beyond valuable in troubleshooting complex systems--where the depth of finite details can easily clog the process--to extract a conceptual result.

The philosophy remains an important tool in the engineering world for those who conduct “failure analysis” studies in modern industry to pinpoint the 20% of issues that cause 80% of the problems.  For example, all nuclear power plants and major chemical manufacturing companies (which are among the most elaborate, high-tech, and sophisticated operating systems in existence) have a small group (20%) of "critical equipment" that makes or breaks production levels, and is therefore directly associated with the vast majority (80%) of system problems.  Consequently, the common solution is to focus 80% of efforts on the 20% of issues at the heart of the problem to maximize success.  (The percentages are intended as reasonable estimates instead of hard numbers, so despite being able to flesh out finite details that may not fit the equation, the concept still retains value in the big picture.)

(gif by ix3623 on the UG)

The time for talk is done.  Now it's fight time.  I'm getting ready to head over to the Sportatorium in Deer Park to check out this event.  You should too.  See you at the fights!