Data Scientist Previews Vinc Pichel vs. Mark Madsen

Vinc Pichel vs. Mark Madsen

Two lightweights on the cusp of moving up to a top ranked fighter will clash next weekend. Vinc Pichel is priced a 57% probability of winning the fight, and Mark Madsen is priced at a 42% probability of winning the fight. The only fight that is expected to be a closer call that weekend is the women’s Strawweight fight between Dern and Torres. This fight between Pichel and Madsen could determine the future of these fighters in the UFC. At their age, the time to make big moves is now.

This fight is a bad matchup for Vinc Pichel because of his terrible takedown defense. In his last four fights, he has been taken down at least twice in every fight… but somehow has won 3 out of 4. His last opponent, Austin Hubbard, took him down 4 times and Vinc still found a way to win the fight.

Mark Madsen, on the other hand, outwrestles his opponents. This is no surprise, as he is an Olympic silver medalist. Madsen is 3-0 in the UFC octagon. However, statistically speaking, Madsen has gotten steadily worse every fight.

The writing is on the wall for this fight. Pichel won’t be able to stop the takedown, but will Madsen be able to keep Pichel down? Pichel has never lost as a favorite in the UFC, and Madsen has never been an underdog before.

Do the sportsbooks know what they are pricing? Let’s find out.

Pichel has a takedown defense of 25%, and Madsen averages 60% takedown accuracy. This one stat alone has identified who I would pick to win on April 9th. Mark Madsen will win through controlling fight and riding out a Unanimous Decision win. Let’s take a look at some more stats to confirm this initial prediction.

Vinc Pichel does best when he has more time to recover between fights. Pichel will have taken 231 days since his last fight. Any time Pichel has had over 200 days to recover before a fight, he is undefeated. Does this matter? Personally, it does matter to me, but let’s run a simulation.

I am numbers guy and will forever be a numbers guy, so I ran our Markov Chain Monte Carlo simulation of the fight. The simulation takes in the fighters’ odds and attributes to simulate a fight between them. In the 10,000 simulations of the fight, we calculate their typical range of units winning on x axis. The graph to the right shows, through the 10,000 simulations, what would be the usual amount won in each simulation. In this fight, it shows that Mark Madsen would win most often.

Vinc Pichel will either get up from the takedown and out strike Mark Madsen, or Mark Madsen will ride Vinc Pichel on the ground for 15 minutes. We have seen grapplers vs. strikers since the 1993, and the grappler usually wins. Lastly, fighters who have a takedown defense of 100% and have won at least 3 UFC fights win 59% of the time with a record of 232-160 since the UFC began. This gives Madsen an edge of more than 15% on this fight. Put your money on Madsen unless our machine learning model picks say otherwise. These picks have 66% accuracy in the last 80+ fights. Mark Madsen wins by unanimous decision at +130 odds.

Next week, we will preview the below fights.