Track Fights Methodology

Track Fights uses a chess-style Elo rating system adapted for MMA. Every recorded fight updates both fighters based on expected outcome versus actual outcome. Beating a higher-rated opponent adds more points than beating a lower-rated opponent.

Data Sources

Primary records come from public MMA fight-result datasets and official event pages. When source coverage lags, controlled fallback ingestion is used, then conflicts are validated before publish.

Fight Processing

Each fight is normalized into a common schema: event date, red corner, blue corner, outcome, method, and weight class. Duplicate fight IDs are rejected. Source conflicts are flagged into a report rather than silently merged.

Manual Corrections

Manual CSV overrides are used for known edge cases: aliases, excluded bouts, and championship lineage fixes. Every override is explicit and version controlled so changes are auditable.

Why Rankings Differ From Official Promotion Rankings

Promotion rankings and Elo rankings answer different questions. Promotion rankings are editorial and title-cycle driven. Track Fights Elo is formula driven, updates after each result, and can reward difficult non-title wins even when they do not move an official ranking slot.

Inactivity and Context

The model marks fighters active or inactive using a defined threshold window and applies configured decay for long inactivity periods. Divisional transitions are context-aware so historical performance is not treated as a full reset.