Throwdown Fantasy

Wednesday, June 17, 2015

Throwdown Tips: How To Pick Your Fighters ?

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Ever wanted to try playing fantasy boxing but haven’t because you’re having a hard time picking the fighters for your team? You’re in luck because we’ve got some good tips on how to pick your fighters at Throwdown Fantasy so that you can start winning in our games:
Look at Win-Loss Records

courtesy of stubhubcenter.com
Win-loss records tell the story of a fighter’s career. It tells you how many wins, losses, draws, no-contests, knockouts and wins by decision he’s had throughout his entire career. For discussion purposes, let’s take a look at the record of Timothy Bradley Jr., who’s one of the featured competitors in Throwdown Fantasy‘s #BronerPorter games. Here is the record of Desert Storm: 31-1-1-1 12 KOs.
Bradley’s statline says that he has 31 wins, 1 loss, 1 draw, 1 no-contest and 12 knockout wins (in that particular order). Now what’s the significance of this?
With 12 KOs in 31 wins, his record says that he’s not the one to pick if  you’re looking for KOs because he’s not a knockout artist like say A Deontay Wilder and Gennady Golovkin who have a combined 62 KOS in 66 fights. So while Bradley is a good pick because he’s won 91% of his fights, he’s most probably going to do it by decision rather than by abbreviation.
Let’s go Bradley’s June 27 bout with Jessie Vargas, because if we take a look at Vargas’ win-loss record, it says 26-0-0-0 with 9 KOs. If you match that up against Bradley’s, Doesn’t it make Vargas better because he is undefeated? Not necessarily, and that brings us to our next item for discussion: Quality of past opponents.



Look at Past Opponents

courtesy of boxing.com
Tim Bradley Jr. has fought Manny Pacquiao twice, going 1-1 against the Filipino ring legend. Impressive? Bradley’s also beaten Kendall Holt, Lamont Peterson,  Devon Alexander, Joel CasamayorRuslan Provodnikov, Juan Manuel Marquez  . That’s some murderer’s row right there, don’t you think?
On the other hand, Jessie Vargas is the WBA light welterweight champion, winning the title via unanimous decision from  Khabib Allakhverdiev in April 2014. He also owns victories over  Vivian Harris, Josésito López, Steve Forbes, Wale Omotoso and most recently Antonio DeMarco. That list isn’t a cherry picker’s list either, but it’s not as impressive as Bradley’s list.
We’d like to discuss each opponent to drive home our point, but that would make this too long. Instead, you may click on the names of Bradley’s and Vargas’ opponents to see their records too and compare them. Or if you know boxing really well, you know what we’re driving at: The quality of past opponents gives out the quality of the fighter, although this is not also absolute. So this is the reason why Bradley is priced higher than Vargas in our game.
Look at their Stats
Fantasy Boxing: Bradley-Vargas
Stats are what wins you the games. So let’s try to read this head to head between Bradley and Vargas. We saw in their win-loss records that both Vargas and Bradley aren’t KO artists with a combined 21 KOs in 57 wins. Now notice that their punch stats are high and that’s because most of their fights go the distance( that’s where they earn their fantasy points from). Let’s compare it with a different card:
Wilder Molina
Now don’t let this one mislead you. Deontay Wilder does average 88.48 fantasy points per fight, but yes he does connect only on an average of 40.7 punches per fight. Here’s why:
Wilder SummaryWilder’s won all but one of his fights by KO and in some instances as in the Audley Harrison and Malik Scott bout, he needed just 5 and 4 punches  respectively, to win. So if you’re looking for KO points, you’ve got to notice fighters like Wilder who don’t land too many punches but average big fantasy points because these are knockout artists.
Look for Weight
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We all know what happened to Daniel Geale against Miguel Cotto and while we don’t want to take credit away from Cotto and Freddie Roach, the strategy to set a catchweight of 157 pounds was key in their bout. The result? Geale rehydrated to 180 pounds on fight night, looked unhealthy and was flat. He also didn’t have good balance while his punches lacked sting. Cotto knocked him out in Round 4. So before you pick fights, know what weight the fight is at and relate that to the boxers involved in the fight.
Secondly, let’s go back to the previous item which we discussed: The stats. Usually, the higher the weight class,  the more possibility of knockouts. So with the exception of say Roman “Chocolatito” Gonzalez who is a KO artist despite being the smallest fighter in the Top 10 Pound for Pound list, smaller fighters usually go the distance while fights at heavier weight classes usually end in KOs.
Look for Style of Fight
MayweatherPacquiao
We go back to our launch last May 2 during the #MayPac $10K Throwdown. Coming in to the fight, we all knew Manny Pacquiao was all-action, throwing punches is bunches and finishing with KOs. We also knew that Floyd Mayweather Jr. is the best defensive fighter the sport has ever seen and fights at a distance. Here was their pre-fight head to head stats:
Mayweather Pacquiao
Mayweather’s high punch stats denote that he’s a boxer, a master boxer at that. Pacquiao meanwhile has all the KOs in his resume, 38 to be exact so his punch stats are lower. But how did styles come into play during the fight?
Well Money made Manny miss a lot and he nailed Pacquiao with a lot of counter rights each time the Filipino tried to penetrate his defense. Forget that injured shoulder, it wasn’t a factor. Mayweather’s  defense was the key to the fight. As they say, styles make fights and you’ve got to pick the right style in every match-up.
Salary Cap
Fight-list
Every game has a fantasy salary cap of $25,000 that you have to use to draft five fighters, so that’s an average of $5,000 per boxer. With that amount, you can’t draft five favorites in one team. You have to be able to mix your favorites with the right underdogs. So unless you want to enter the game more than once (which you can do with Throwdown Fantasy) what you do is make use of the other factors discussed above in choosing fighters. If you choose wisely, you could be our next big winner.
The current big game is #BronerPorter $2K Throwdown which ends on June 20. Go check it out at Throwdown Fantasy because by far, it’s got the most exciting group of bouts with a lot of live underdogs who can really win it for you. What are you waiting for, Throwdown now!

Special thanks to Throwdownfantasy.com 

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