September 21st, 2013 is just around the corner and one of the most dominant champions in UFC history is in action.

At the top of the card, Jon Jones (18-1 MMA, 12-1 UFC) puts his UFC light-heavyweight title on the line against Alexander Gustafsson (15-1 MMA, 7-1 UFC).

A win for Jones would see him surpass Tito Ortiz’s all-time light-heavyweight record of five successful UFC title defenses.

Let’s take a look at the last three results of the two men headlining the event:

Jones followed a decision win against former teammate Rashad Evans with a fourth-round TKO stoppage over former UFC light-heavyweight champion Vitor Belfort and a first-round TKO win against Chael Sonnen.

Jones’ recent fights have not been without incident, with an armbar attempt from Belfort threatening the closest thing we’ve seen to a legitimate loss in Jones’ professional career, not to mention a gruesome toe injury mid-fight against Sonnen.

Gustafsson followed a first-round TKO victory against Vladimir Matyushenko with back-to-back unanimous decision wins over Thiago Silva and former UFC light-heavyweight champion Maurício ‘Shogun’ Rua.

In Gustafsson (6 ft 5), Jones (6 ft 4) will be facing a taller man for the first time in his 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 Jones fared against any shared opponents and on the right, you’ll see Gustafsson’s results against the same men.

The two men share three common opponents; Matt Hamill, Vladimir Matyushenko, and Shogun Rua.

A controversial disqualification in an otherwise dominant display means Hamill is technically responsible for the sole blemish on Jones record, whereas Gustafsson defeated Hamill via second-round TKO.

Both men scored first-round TKO wins against Matyushenko, whilst Gustafsson had to settle for a decision win over Rua- an opponent Jones defeated via third-round TKO to begin his title reign.

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 165: Jon Jones vs. Alexander Gustafsson posts an enormous score of +47, ranking 1st out of all 247 events in UFC history. It’s a whopping 30% increase from the previous highest-scoring event, UFC 117: Anderson Silva vs. Chael Sonnen, which had held the number one spot for over three years. Here’s a look at how this score compares to other events’ scores over the past year: