The FF-Files: A Reintroduction

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Sherdog Fight Finder is made up of dozens of international staff members singularly devoted to recording every fight that has ever happened. These staff members work tirelessly for the love of the sport, and we love them for it. While some six years has passed since FF-Files first launched under the auspices of Chris Nelson, the sport has evolved and grown to an exponential degree.

Because of this, every day, we here at Sherdog get dozens of emails requesting Fight Finder updates. When we say “every day,” we mean it. We received five emails on Christmas Day this year. With “The Ultimate Fighter” reviving, we have received requests billed as emergencies to get their records updated, so that the UFC can review their combat histories properly. It’s non-stop when it comes to fight requests.

First and foremost, we ask that you only use our official Fight Finder address to send in requests and updates: [email protected]. Please don’t bother the staff directly with individual requests, and don’t track down editors on their personal accounts to harass them about how your email sent in yesterday has not been answered. It won’t help anyone.

When we receive emails, the best we can ask for are the ones with complete video from the promoters, with clearly designated results and properly submitted information – these are all incredibly useful for the Fight Finder staff to parse through the litany of requests we receive on a regular basis. More often than not, unfortunately, we instead get vague emails that tell us the following:

Anonymous Submitter: Please add this fight for our fighter, Viktor beat Mikhail on December 2011 in Russia.

This is not remotely enough information to even start processing this request. There is nothing we can do when we receive this kind of vague email, much less when that same person sends it in five times in the span of two days without so much as a photograph to document the fight. Additionally, we don’t like to add single fights from events, because it shortchanges every other fighter that competed on the card. In the time it takes you to complain that we are asking too much of you, you could have already contacted the promoter and had them send the full, official results to us.

When we respond asking questions and looking for any shred of evidence that this fight happened when you claim it did, it is not out of a desire to complicate things. We do not want to make the process more difficult for anyone involved, but in order to do our jobs, we need certain particulars to get it done. We don’t ask for the moon; we have created multiple guides in the past that can help everyone out. For example, we created a guide written in multiple languages that can be found on the front page of the site, under the Fight Finder drop-down. We even created a blank template for submitters to send in the results in an easy-to-use format. This does not seem to be enough.

To reintroduce the Fight Finder team to the community once again, we would like to re-present a list of information that we collect from events and the bouts included. While more information is always better, we have a minimum standard to meet so that we can actually input the information into the database. Share this information, spread it around, tell a friend and have them tell 10 more friends.

Event Information

• Organization
This is the name of the organization promoting the event; for example, Ultimate Fighting Championship or Fight Nights Global. Some events are promoted by a gym or team, for example Jackson-Wink, and those names should be included as well. The events themselves can’t be in some backyard or put together like a sparring match – gym smokers are not pro MMA fights.

• Event Title
This is the title of the specific event being submitted. Some organizations title their events with numbers and surnames of the headliners, but others have titles like “Tournament in Memory of.” Other events have no titles at all, and that is no problem; if it does have a title, we prefer to list it.

• Date
A simple category that provides a surprising amount of grief. International results lead to international writings of the date. Some countries write month/day/year, others date/month/year. To keep things uniform, we would first prefer you write out the name of the month, e.g. “January 15.” If you must write numbers, keep it simple with year/month/day, like 2020/12/25.

• Venue and Location
Where was the fight held? We need to know both the building or area that the event took place, and the city, state and country. The more information, the better: While we can enter the event as taking place in a country, we would vastly prefer the full name of the venue and locale. “Insanity Nightclub, Bangkok, Thailand” is much better for our records than simply writing “Thailand.”

Bout Information

• Winning and Losing Fighters
We can’t stress this enough: If you don’t identify who is fighting, we can’t add their fights. The Fight Finder ID number is the easiest way to identify the fighters. This ID number can be found on the end of a fighter’s profile URL, like Royce Gracie is 19 or Max Holloway is 38671. If the fighter does not have a profile, you have to give the Fight Finder staff information about the fighter. At minimum, we need the first and last name of the fighter, their weight category and their country. More information on the fighter – like their height, gym/association, nickname, date of birth and a photo – is welcomed, and will be added to the fighter’s profile.

• Round, Time and Method
The more details, the better. Format the time like 1:10 for a finish at one minute, 10 seconds. Do not assume that because a fight went the distance, you should not list the time. Many promoters and federations send in results as simply “TKO” or “submission,” but we would like more than that. We cannot make assumptions as to how or when the fight ended if we cannot see it take place, and frankly the team does not have enough hours in the day to watch every stoppage and mark the time and method of victory. If a fighter kicks their opponent in the head in the first round, and chases them down to finish the fight with punches at 3:30, it should be listed as “TKO (Head Kick and Punches),” Round 1, 3:30. If a fighter is unconscious from a single strike or otherwise unable to continue fighting, that can be listed as a KO. These details tell the story much better than a simple flat Round 1 TKO.

• Referee
The plan, as it has been for years, is to include a searchable database of referees, where anyone can see every fight a certain referee has overseen. As it stands, the referee name is visible on the record, so if you have the name of the referee, please include it.

• Weight Class
Even though you can’t see it from event or fighter profile pages, we do keep track of weight classes for every fight. The plan back in 2014 was to display it, and believe it or not, it is still in the works. Sometimes these things happen in MMA, and sometimes they don’t. We use this to keep track of the weights of the fighters, and try to keep each fighter’s profile up to date with their most recent weight and division.

This is everything as it pertains to required Fight Finder information to register the fights. If we don’t have the bare necessities, it’s not personal when we ask you for more information. It’s just a matter of getting the necessary data to input and update these fights. To paraphrase Chris Nelson, who may or may not have been quoting Jerry Maguire, “help us, help you.”