Earlier today, MMA Fighting's Marc Raimondi revealed (as part of a three-part series) that the California State Athletic Commission is investigating unsanctioned shows, particularly promotions like the infamous Xplode Fight Series, who have been under intense scrutiny for over a year. Here's the basic rundown of what the CSAC plans to do, per Raimondi's article:

CSAC is considering sanctions against fighters who compete in these unregulated, Native American reservation shows, and is also investigating whether or not some promoters are committing criminal acts, according to chairman John Carvelli.

The impending investigation was spurred by the viral "soccer mom" video, which featured the woefully out-of-shape and overmatched Katie Castro (who isn't a soccer mom, by the way) getting ripped apart by recent Bellator signing Ilima MacFarlane.

Bloody Elbow first examined Xplode Fight Series' questionable practices when the UFC signed then-undefeated Dashon Johnson. One scan of his record suggests he'd fought an embarrassingly low-level of competition, and predictably flamed out of the UFC, as did women's bantamweight Alexis Dufresne. Further research showed that Xplode had clearly been falsifying records of some fighters to be better than they actually were. Of course, Xplode owner Gregg Sharp always defends the matchmaking by claiming the fights are booked at the last-minute due to constant pullouts.

Late last month, the excellent Suzanne Davis produced a labor-intensive, incredibly time-consuming, but remarkably informative and comprehensive breakdown of the numbers behind XFS matchmaking. A link to the Google Document describing her project can be found here, along with a full link to the spreadsheet itself. In the interest of space and formatting purposes, I've only chosen a few highlights of what is a massive compilation of data which includes every XFS event to date, whether professional or amateur.

The event which MacFarlane competed in had 16 pro bouts, but the losing opponents had a combined MMA record of 1-102.

Their last event in May saw an entire show's worth of pro fighters who came into their respective fights without a single win, with several of them making their pro debuts. (The records listed are from immediately after the event. So 0-1 = 0-0 before the event.)

Go a little further back and you'll see that one losing fighter comprises 27 of the 29 wins of the entire list of fighters who lost on the card.

As Davis notes, the fight experience numbers actually aren't that wide:

In regards to fight experience, Winners had 53.11% (503) more fights than Losers and 136.93% (838) more experience than the Both-ers. If you added the fight experience of both the Losers and the Both-ers, that number would only place them 7.52% (109) above the Winners. Losers had 54.74% (335) more fights than the Both-ers. When it comes to the number of wins on their records, Winners had 364.38% (798) more wins than the Losers and 231.27% (710) more than the Both-ers. Both-ers had 40.18% (88) more wins than the Losers. Conversely, Losers had 68.13% (295) more losses than the Winners and 139.69% (423) more than the Both-ers. Winners had 41.97% (128) more losses than the Both-ers. They did this in 838 more fights while Losers did it in 335 more fights. The average Winner's record was 5.88 wins, 2.50 losses. The average Loser's record was 1.22 wins, 4.07 losses. The average Both-ers record was pretty even at 5.79 wins, 5.75 losses.

Note: Winners = Fighters who went undefeated in XFS, Losers = Fighters who were winless in XFS, Both-ers = Fighters who won and lost in XFS.

However, discrepancy in record quality for the winners and losers is staggering:

The Winners combined for a record of 1017 wins, 433 losses, for a win percentage of 70.14%. To compare, Anderson Silva (34-6) has an 85% win percentage, Fedor Emelianenko (34-4) has an 89.48% win percentage, Randy Couture (19-11) has a 63.3% win percentage, and BJ Penn (16-10) has a 61.53% win percentage. In no way does this intend to compare XFS fighters to legends, it's only pointing out that win percentages tend to be more Couture/Penn than Silva/Fedor. On the opposite side, the Losers combined for a 219 wins, 728 loss record, a 23.13% win percentage.

There are 130+ professional fighters who have competed in Xplode who neither won a fight in the organization nor have won a professional bout at all. Many of these fighters were used as opponents against guys like Dashon Johnson, Patrick Cummins, Walel Watson, and several others who are current or former UFC fighters. Many of the fighters are listed as "independent" or train out of Team Dirty Tactics, whose winning percentage is a lot closer to 0% than it is 10%.

It's no secret that Xplode Fight Series is a promotion rife with squash matches, and it's worked to the benefit of Reign MMA and Team Hurricane Awesome. We'll see what comes out of the CSAC's investigation on unsanctioned orgs in the state, because Xplode has certainly been in the headlines for all the wrong reasons in the past year.

You can follow Suzanne Davis on Twitter at @SoozieCuzie.