This Sunday, Donald ‘Cowboy’ Cerrone (32-10 MMA, 19-7 UFC) takes on Yancy Medeiros (15-4 MMA, 6-4 UFC) in Austin, Texas.

For the fourth consecutive fight, Cerrone will have the opportunity to level the all-time record (currently held by both Michael Bisping and Georges St-Pierre) of 20 UFC victories.

This will be Cerrone’s 27th UFC contest, behind only Jim Miller (28) and Bisping (29) in terms of all-time UFC appearances, although ‘Cowboy’ only made his promotional debut in 2011, compared to 2006 for Bisping and 2008 for Miller.

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

Cerrone followed a second-round TKO loss to Jorge Masvidal- a result which ended his four-fight winning streak at welterweight- with a close decision defeat to former UFC welterweight champion Robbie Lawler last July.

‘Cowboy’ then took on young Liverpudlian Darren Till, losing emphatically via first-round TKO in what was a breakthrough performance for the Englishman. Before this losing streak, Cerrone had never lost consecutive fights in his professional MMA career.

Yancy Medeiros’ recent form couldn’t be more contrasting. The Hawaiian scored a second-round submission win over Sean Spencer in September 2016 before notching impressive back-to-back TKO victories against Erick Silva and Alex Oliveira.

Medeiros, who has won 5 fight night bonuses in his last 8 bouts, put on an incredible performance in a back-and-forth slugfest against Oliveira- a fight which was nominated for most publications’ Fight of the Year prize for 2017.

Here’s a look at how these two fighters fared when competing against common opponents shared throughout their careers. On the left of the graphic, you’ll see how Cerrone fared against any shared opponents and on the right, you’ll see Medeiros’ results against the same men.

The two men have faced three common opponents throughout their careers; Jim Miller, John Makdessi and Alex Oliveira. Cerrone scored wins over all three shared opponents, defeating Miller and Makdessi via second-round KO and TKO, respectively, and Oliveira via first-round submission.

Medeiros scored a close split-decision win over Makdessi in December 2015- a result that 11/14 polled media members disagreed with- two years before his aforementioned third-round TKO victory over Oliveira. Unlike Cerrone, Medeiros lost to Miller- succumbing to a first-round guillotine choke back in April 2014.

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. A fighter coming off a No Contest, a draw, or a bout with another promotion has a streak of 0, and only UFC results are considered. 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 events of all time, to help give some context to this score.

UFC Fight Night 126: Donald Cerrone vs. Yancy Medeiros checks in with a relatively steady score of +2.

This score ranks 32nd out of all 41 events in the last year and 15th out of 24 Fight Night events in that same time frame.

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

As you can see, this score falls some way short of the +11.2 average for all events in the last 12 months and is slightly beneath the +3.4 average for Fight Night events in that same period.

Let’s take a look at exactly how this score breaks down:

The highest individual contributors to this score are Yancy Medeiros and James Vick (both +3), with Jared Gordon (+2) close behind.

The lowest individual scorer is Josh Burkman (-4). Burkman will need to score a win, as Ross Pearson did last week, to avoid joining Andrei Arlovski, B.J. Penn, Josh Koscheck, Leonard Garcia and Steve Cantwell in the list of fighters who have lost 5 consecutive fights whilst competing under the UFC banner.

Enjoy the fights!