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Every time a WWE pay-per-view (PPV) event is on the horizon, the staff of Cageside Seats offers predictions for all of the advertised matches on the card. This data can be used to calculate a simple predictability rating for any event.
Five different staff members predicted the winners for the matches that took place at Fastlane 2018 (Sun., Mar. 11, 2018) from the Nationwide Arena in Columbus, Ohio. Staff members received credit for a correct prediction of the winner of any match, even if they were wrong about the context of that victory.
The Cageside Seats match preview articles for Elimination Chamber 2018 also offered polls allowing Cagesiders the chance to weigh in with their predictions.
The following chart contains the prediction results for every match. The leftmost column includes the full match list. Below each staff member's name, the number "1" is a correct prediction, the number "0" is an incorrect prediction, and empty spaces indicate that no prediction data was available. The rightmost column contains the overall predictability rating for every match, and the very last row shows the overall accuracy of each individual staff member.
The pre-show tag team match featuring Breezango was omitted because it wasn’t announced early enough for the staff to make predictions.
The line for Bobby Roode’s match can be interpreted as follows: “4 out of 6 predictions for Roode’s match were correct, which is a predictability rating of 66.7%.”
Staff Predictions for Fastlane 2018
| Match | Geno | Sean | Cain | Rev | Kyle | Polls | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Match | Geno | Sean | Cain | Rev | Kyle | Polls | Total |
| Nakamura vs. Rusev | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 100.0 |
| Roode vs. Orton | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 66.7 |
| Becky & Naomi vs. Natalya & Carmella | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.0 |
| The Usos vs. New Day | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.0 | |
| Flair vs. Riott | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 100.0 |
| Six-Pack Challenge | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 66.7 |
| 66.7 | 50.0 | 66.7 | 50.0 | 50.0 | 60.0 | 57.1 |
These numbers add up to 20 correct predictions and 15 incorrect predictions, which means the overall predictability rating for Fastlane 2018 is 57.1%.
This decreases the overall predictability rating for 2018 WWE PPVs from 66.7% down to 63.6% (68 correct versus 39 incorrect predictions). For comparison's sake, the overall predictability rating for 2015 WWE PPVs was 63.4%, in 2016 it was 61.1%, and in 2017 it was 61.6%.
It’s a little harsh to grade everyone incorrectly on the New Day match. Technically we all could have picked No Contest, but none of us officially went that route. The Cageside match preview poll for this entry was omitted because Cagesiders were not given “No Contest” as an option in the poll, which means there was no way they could get it right.
The most startling result is probably the zeros across the board for Becky’s match. Considering that Becky Lynch never wins on PPV, we probably should have known better.
The staff of Cageside Seats had a decent night with predicting the winners at Fastlane 2018. How did you fare, Cagesiders?