Hi -
In the past I have carried out a lot of statistical analysis on boxing, and there are many more questions that I'd like to answer.
These include:
- at what age do fighters start to deteriorate? does this vary by weight class?
- how do fighters of different nationalities fare against each other?
- can one statistically categorize fighters by their results into types (KO artists/boxers/the Marciano-like type whose name escapes me)
- if one can categorize these fighters into types, then can we assess how well fighters of different types fare against each other?
- to what extent does weight determine the outcome of fights (at heavyweight)
... and a lot more besides. I could point you to some analysis on rsb if you would like to see the type of thing that I'm talking about.
To do this, I would need access to a database of fight results. Yours is the industry standard, so it would help enormously if I could get access to it.
I understand that this database has taken a great deal of effort for you to compile, and that you don't want someone else pirating the information for purposes that would run counter to your interests. To mitigate this risk, I would be perfectly willing to sign anything you'd like that would mean that I couldn't further distribute the database, that I would credit you in full for anything I did with the results, and that you would have a veto against releasing any analysis derived from your data in any public forum.
I would greatly appreciate it if you would consider this - I think that there are a lot of questions that can be answered by this kind of analysis, and we could advance our understanding of the sport we love considerably in this fashion.
Thanks