This Saturday, the UFC returns to Houston with the first two title fights of the new decade.

In the main event, Jon Jones (25-1 MMA, 19-1 UFC) looks to make the third defense of his second light-heavyweight title reign against Dominick Reyes (12-0 MMA, 6-0 UFC).

In the co-main, Valentina Shevchenko (18-3 MMA, 7-2 UFC) is also aiming to make a third title defense, as she puts her flyweight championship on the line against Katlyn Chookagian (13-2 MMA, 6-2 UFC).

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

Jones won the vacant UFC light-heavyweight title with a third-round TKO over Alexander Gustafsson a little over a year ago, then successfully defended the belt in consecutive five-round decision victories against Anthony Smith and Thiago Santos.

With his win against Smith, Jones recorded the fastest ever defense of a UFC title after first winning the belt (63 days), breaking a record that Maurice Smith and Frank Shamrock had jointly held since the late 1990s.

Reyes followed back-to-back three-round decision verdicts over Ovince Saint Preux and Volkan Oezdemir with an emphatic first-round KO win over former UFC middleweight champion Chris Weidman.

Reyes’ victory over Saint Preux would likely have gone down as a TKO victory had it gone on a second or two longer, whereas he was perhaps fortunate to get the nod against Oezdemir in a contest that 11 out of 19 polled media members felt Reyes lost.



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 Jones fared against any shared opponents and on the right, you’ll see Reyes’ results against the same men.

The two men share just one common opponent; Ovince Saint Preux.

Jones won the interim UFC light-heavyweight title in a five-round unanimous decision victory over Saint Preux back in April 2016, whilst Reyes just missed out on a TKO stoppage in his aforementioned three-round unanimous decision victory.

Let’s take a look at the last three results of the two women in Saturday night’s co-main event:

Shevchenko became the UFC flyweight champion following a unanimous decision victory over Joanna Jędrzejczyk, making her first defense in a spectacular second-round KO of Jessica Eye before defeating Liz Carmouche in an uninspiring five-round decision.

After avenging her 2010 TKO defeat to Carmouche, Shevchenko has emerged victorious against every fighter she’s faced in her career except for UFC bantamweight and featherweight champion Amanda Nunes.

Chookagian rebounded from a split-decision defeat against Eye with back-to-back unanimous decision victories over Joanne Calderwood and Jennifer Maia.

‘Blonde Fighter’ has seen all of her first eight UFC fights go to the judges’ scorecards, racking up two hours of cage-time in her relatively short UFC career.

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 Shevchenko fared against any shared opponents and on the right, you’ll see Chookagian’s results against the same women.

The two women share two common opponents; Liz Carmouche and Jessica Eye.

Shevchenko has faced Carmouche on two occasions, avenging a 2010 TKO defeat with a unanimous decision win last summer, whilst Chookagian dropped a split-decision verdict to Carmouche in November 2016.

Eye suffered a brutal second-round head-kick KO against Shevchenko last year, although she found success in a split-decision victory over Chookagian.

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 events of all time, to help give some context to this score. UFC 247: Jon Jones vs. Dominick Reyes posts a score of +15. This score ranks 17th out of all 43 UFC events in the last year, and 9th out of 14 Pay-Per-View events in the same time frame. Here’s a look at how this score compares to other events’ scores over the past year: