How to read a tale of the tape

Reach is fingertip to fingertip, and a real advantage of several inches changes what both fighters have to do. The longer fighter can land from a distance where nothing comes back; the shorter one has to close that distance, which is the hardest and most dangerous thing in the sport. Watch whether the long fighter actually uses it — plenty of them fight like they are short and lose for it.

Height mostly tells you about leverage and where the head sits. Two inches with no reach to go with it rarely shows up. Where it does matter is grappling: taller fighters have longer legs and higher centers of gravity, which makes them easier to take down and better at locking up chokes and triangles once they are there.

Orthodox against orthodox is the default and both fighters have seen it ten thousand times. Orthodox against southpaw is the unusual one, and it changes which punches are open, which kicks land, and who controls the lead foot. A fighter who has faced mostly one kind of opponent has a blind spot you can see coming.

What you actually want from the age line is miles, not years: how many hard fights, how many wars, how many knockouts absorbed. A thirty-five-year-old with a short clean career and a twenty-nine-year-old who has been in six brawls are not what the number suggests. Age is useful at the edges and vague in the middle.

Wins and losses are the least informative numbers on the graphic, because they say nothing about who those wins came against. What is worth extracting is the shape: how they win (finishes or decisions, early or late), how they lose (stopped or outpointed), and whether the losses cluster against one type of opponent. A fighter who has only ever lost to wrestlers is telling you how to beat them.

The numbers the graphic leaves out are the ones worth keeping yourself: how a fighter looked the last time they were tired, who they struggle to hit, and what ended their last three fights.