Inside the Octagon: How AI Brings UFC’s Fastest Moments into Focus
6/2/202647 min
Most of what happens inside the UFC Octagon is too fast for the human eye to follow. Enter Alon Cohen, Executive Vice President of Innovation for TKO, who has spent 15 years building the data and AI systems that expose the hidden moments that help decide a match. Malcolm Gladwell sits down with Alon to uncover how UFC’s partnership with IBM turns chaos into clarity, giving fans and commentators a deeper story behind every bout.
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First 90 secondsAlon Cohen· Guest0:00
This is an iHeart podcast, Guaranteed Human I'm Malcolm Gladwell, and you're listening to Smart Talks with IBM.
Malcolm Gladwell· Host0:10
[instrumental music] Most of what happens in a UFC fight is too fast to see. A fighter drops their shoulder for a split second. Did you catch it? A shift in position that looks insignificant but changes everything. Were you watching? Alon Cohen is the head of R&D for UFC. His job is to help people see those moments, not by slowing things down, but by knowing what to point to after it happens. By the time you realize something mattered, his data systems have already figured out why. It's taken 15 years to get here, first with paper scorecards and a TiVo, now in partnership with IBM. And along the way, Alon's learned something that applies far beyond fighting: the best technology is the kind you don't notice at all. It just helps you see. I thought you were gonna be, like, tattoos, muscle shirt. I thought you were gonna, like... I- I thought you were gonna represent the brand in that respect. [laughs] [laughs] That you yourself would be m- would be a kind of, you know, mixed martial arts type. You are not, in fact, a mixed martial arts type.
Alon Cohen· Guest1:21
Uh, I did a little taekwondo in my past.
Malcolm Gladwell· Host1:23
Yeah.
Alon Cohen· Guest1:24
I am, I am not, in the way that you put that, not a mixed- [laughs] ... martial arts type. But I think if you,