On Saturday, the UFC returns to Singapore for the third time and the twentieth event hosted in Asia in promotional history.

In the main event, Donald Cerrone (33-10 MMA, 20-7 UFC) takes on a man almost ten years his junior, rising English prospect Leon Edwards (15-3 MMA, 7-2 UFC).

A win for ‘Cowboy’ would see him claim the sole record for the most victories in UFC history (21), a title he currently shares with Michael Bisping and Georges St-Pierre on 20.

Let’s take a look at the recent results of the two men in Saturday’s main event:

Cerrone followed a close decision defeat last July against former UFC welterweight champion Robbie Lawler with a first-round TKO loss against another rising English prospect, Darren Till, in October.

‘Cowboy’ rebounded from these two losses- part of a three-fight losing streak overall- with a first-round TKO victory over Yancy Medeiros in February.

Edwards, currently on a five-fight UFC winning streak, followed back-to-back unanimous decision victories over Vicente Luque and Bryan Barberena last year with a third-round TKO victory over Peter Sobotta in March.

That win over Sobotta, at 4:59 of the third round, matched the record for the latest finish in a three-round UFC fight- a record that had just been set by Paul Craig against Magomed Ankalaev that same night.

Cerrone and Edwards share no common opponents throughout their professional MMA careers.

The Dwyer Score

Each event, I calculate a ‘Dwyer Score’ for the card. It essentially gives a numeric value to the momentum of fighters competing at any one event. I do this by assigning a figure to each fighter’s current streak; a fighter on a five-fight winning streak contributes +5 to an event’s score, whilst a fighter on a two-fight losing streak contributes -2 to the score. Only UFC results are considered and a fighter coming off a no-contest, a draw, or a bout with another promotion has a streak of 0. When you tally up the scores for every fighter on a card, you get a total for the event- the ‘Dwyer Score.’ This score does not claim to predict or measure the quality or excitement of any one card, but it does give you an idea of the general momentum of fighters heading into a specific event. The graphic to the above-right displays some of the highest-scoring Asian events of all time, to help give some context to this score.

UFC Fight Night 132: Donald Cerrone vs. Leon Edwards checks in with a solid score of +9.

This score ranks joint-19th out of 41 events in the last year and joint-6th out of 23 Fight Night events in that same period.

It also ranks 3rd out of the 20 events the UFC have hosted in Asia in promotional history.

Here’s a look at how this score compares to other events’ scores over the past year:

As you can see, this score far exceeds the +3.8 average for Fight Nights in the last twelve months but falls just short of the +10.4 average for all events in that same time frame.

The score is also a significant increase on the average of -4 for events hosted in Asia since 2015.

The highest individual contributor to the score is Leon Edwards (+5), ahead of Jessica-Rose Clark, Shinsho Anzai and Jake Matthews (all +2).

The lowest scorers are Felipe Arantes and Jenel Lausa (both -2), with Ovince Saint Preux, Li Jingliang, Daichi Abe, Teruto Ishihara, Shane Young, Viviane Pereira and Ulka Sasaki (all -1) also entering the card on the back of a UFC loss.

Two fighters will be making their promotional debuts this weekend; Hector Aldana and former ACB bantamweight champion Petr Yan.

Enjoy the fights!