Greetings, fight fans, and welcome to the 2019 Fightful/Talking MMA Year-End Pick 'Em Awards! Many of you diligently provided us with your main card winner picks for (almost) every UFC event this year, and it's finally time to see who stands tall after a year full of surprises and great mixed martial arts action! Many thanks to everyone who played week-in and week-out, and to those of you who didn't, I hope to see you next year for your shot at some sweet, sweet bragging rights. Without further ado, let's get onto the winners!
The Best Of The Best Award
This award goes to the person who stands tall above them all, the one with more rights than Cody Garbrandt. This person has the best record in all of Fightful! And the winner is...
Winner: uncle
Record: 128 wins, 85 losses
Preferring the strong, silent approach, uncle quietly dominated the competition and amassed a record that after a while simply couldn't be beaten. Congratulations for mopping the floor with all of us!
Runner-up: TheAnalyst99
Record: 121 wins, 73 losses
The Scott Steiner Math Award For Best Winning Percentage
This award goes to the most accurate picker, because sometimes it's not just about how many correct picks you have. With 15 eligible pickers, we all had a 6 2/3% chance of winning. But they're all only half the man I am, so they really only had a 3 1/3% chance, while I had a 53 1/3% chance of winning. So no matter who's name is listed, the real winner is clear. All my freaks out there know what I'm talkin' about!
Winner: TheAnalyst99 (62.4%)
Quite the analyst indeed! He didn't show up for every pick 'em, but when he did he made the most of it by being by being right a lot more than he was wrong.
Runner-up: RogueGambit (60.8%)
Miscellaneous Awards
The Khabib Time Award For Perfection
This one goes to the person who smeshed the competition on more cards than anyone else by amassing the largest number of perfect event picks this year. For this one we're only counting main cards without draws or no contests, because no one predicts those correctly!
Winner: TheAnalyst99 (5)
Nothing like a slew of perfect cards to up your winning percentage, as we see TheAnalyst99 in the win column once again! It's difficult enough to have one perfect card, let alone five in a single year; and even more impressive is that if we include draws and no contests his total jumps up to seven!
Runner-up: Maddawgmar (3)
The Big Draw Award
This award goes to the person with the best pay per view record. Some have better luck on the big shows!
Winner: uncle
Record: 41 wins, 18 losses
Pay per views were the key to uncle's all-around win, as he absolutely cleaned up on the big shows!
Runner-up: TheAnalyst99
Record: 35 wins, 24 losses
The Curt Hawkins Award For Imperfection
The opposite of the previous award, this one is for the person who suffered the most winless events. Thankfully there weren't many of those!
Winner: 777 (2)
She'd gone every year up until now with nary a winless event to her name, but she made sure not do do things halfway when she finally joined the winless club. Relish this award, though I'm sure you won't be looking to repeat next year!
Runner-up: Sinfwho (1)*
*This award similarly doesn't count cards with draws and/or NCs, and although there were plenty of people with one winless event, only Sinfwho would have two if not for that rule, so he gets the red ribbon here
The 'Stick To Fight Nights' Award
Whether it's an affinity for underdogs or just plain old bad luck, some people just don't have a knack for pay per views!
Winner: 777
Record: 27 wins, 32 losses
It didn't help that her two winless cards happened to be on pay per views, but solid Fight Night card records helped even out her overall record. Nonetheless, don't gamble on the big ones!
Runner-up: Jorge Rojas
Record: 28 wins, 31 losses
The 'You Coulda Been A Contender!' Award
This award goes to the person who would have had a real shot at winning the big one if they hadn't skipped any events.
Winner: TheAnalyst99
Is anyone surprised? TheAnalyst99 is showing himself to be the pick 'em MVP of 2019, and his reign of terror likely would have been greater had he not missed three events this year. Despite missing these events he still managed to score the second-most picks and the highest winning percentage of all participants.
Runner-up: Fiasco
The Filthy Casual Award
This one goes to the person who missed the most events without being disqualified from the standings. Do you even UFC, bro?
Winner: Chronolynx (17)
After getting off to a solid start, he eventually relegated his role to special guest picker. Altogether he missed a staggering 17 events, including a streak of 5 missed shows in a row!
Runner-up: Co Ro (13)
The "Thiiiiiis Close" Award
The winner of this award had the most one-loss events, falling just short of perfection.
Winner: 777 (14)
She may have won the award for most winless cards, but she also cleaned up when it came to near-perfect ones. They're not quite sweeps, but they're damn good!
Runner-up: uncle (11)
The Shia LaBeouf 'Even Stevens' Award
This one goes to the person with the most split score events throughout the year. Congrats, you were as good as you were bad!
Winner: uncle (9)
It's hard to imagine that the person with the most .500 cards is also the overall leader; I guess we had some rough outings this year!
Runner-up: SRS (8)
The 'I see you like underdogs' Award
This goes to the person with the lowest winning percentage. Pick a favorite now and then, why don't ya!
Winner: SRS (51.2%)
Fightful's very own Sean Ross Sapp takes this one home in 2019. Analysis can often times be the death of your picks (I know this better than many). Sometimes it be like that!
Runner-up: Patrick aka No Name (52.4%)
The Host With The Most Award
This award goes to the person who has graced you with these wonderful awards.
Winner: sadowolf
Because dammit I want an award too, and I have the power to make it happen!
Runner-up: 777
She helped a bit. And by helped I mean went through the pick 'em articles, tallied up all the scores, and did the most of the hard work, which is pretty important...I guess.
Congratulations to all the winners, and I hope you're ready to do it all over again! Enjoy the rest of 2019, and here's to better picks in 2020!
