

Immediate championship rematches, though much discussed, are rare, with only 10 such fights occurring since 2001. Rose vs. Joanna 2 will be the 11th. A quick look at the outcomes of these fights shows that history is not on Joanna's side.

Including all immediate rematches for championships, the loser of the first fight won the second only about 30% of the time. This includes the only two fights where a challenger lost and received a rematch (Rizzo and Rua). It gets worse for Joanna when looking at only immediate rematches between dethroned UFC champions and the challengers who beat them for the title. Dethroned champions are 1-5 all time in these fights*. The lone victory for a dethroned champion in an immediate rematch came all the way back in 2004, when Randy Couture avenged a controversial loss by doctor stoppage to Vitor Belfort.

The sooner the rematch occurs, the more likely it is that the result will be the same. The average amount of time between fights with the same winner is 157 days. For fights with a different result the average is nearly twice that, 303 days. The time between Joanna and Rose’s fights? 154 days.

Drilling down into the numbers shows another worrying parallel for Joanna. Of the five dethroned champions who lost their rematches, four (Penn, Edgar, Silva, Aldo) were multiple-time defending champions praised with various degrees of "greatest-ever" hyperbole. Sound familiar?

None of this guarantees a Rose win, and Joanna is the betting favorite. But if Rose wins, it's not a shocking upset but history repeating itself. Check out the data below, and vote on who you think will win.

* 2-5 counting GSP, who lost the title to Matt Serra but then regained it in Serra’s first title defense. GSP fought twice between these two fights though, including beating Josh Koscheck for the interim title, so it wasn’t exactly immediate.