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When a WWE pay-per-view (PPV) event is on the horizon, the staff of Cageside Seats usually 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.
Six different staff members predicted the winners for the matches that took place on Aug. 23 at SummerSlam 2020. 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 SummerSlam also offered polls allowing Cagesiders the chance to weigh in with their predictions.
The following chart contains the prediction results for these matches. The leftmost column includes the match list. Below each staff member’s name, the number “1” is a correct prediction and the number “0” is an incorrect prediction. Empty boxes indicate where 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 line for Drew McIntyre’s match can be interpreted as follows: “4 out of 7 predictions for McIntyre’s match were correct, which is a predictability rating of 57.1%.”
Staff Predictions for SummerSlam 2020
| Match | Geno | Sean | Cain | Claire | Kyle | Stella | Polls | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Match | Geno | Sean | Cain | Claire | Kyle | Stella | Polls | Total |
| Apollo Crews vs. MVP | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 71.4 |
| Bayley vs. Asuka | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 42.9 |
| Street Profits vs. Andrade & Garza | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 42.9 |
| Mandy Rose vs. Sonya Deville | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 100.0 |
| Dominik Mysterio vs. Seth Rollins | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 42.9 |
| Sasha Banks vs. Asuka | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 71.4 |
| Drew McIntyre vs. Randy Orton | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 57.1 |
| Braun Strowman vs. Bray Wyatt | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 100.0 |
| Total | 75.0 | 37.5 | 87.5 | 37.5 | 75.0 | 87.5 | 62.5 | 66.1 |
These numbers add up to 37 correct predictions and 19 incorrect predictions, which means the overall predictability rating for SummerSlam 2020 is 66.1%.
This increases the overall predictability rating for 2020 WWE PPVs from 63.6% up to 64.0% (240 correct vs. 135 incorrect predictions). For comparison’s sake, the overall predictability ratings each year from from 2015 through 2019 were 63.4%, 61.1%, 61.6%, 58.7%, and 63.7%, respectively.
Now here are the voting percentages from the Cageside community polls for the winners of these matches:
- 65%: Apollo Crews over MVP
- 40%: Bayley over Asuka
- 42%: Street Profits over Andrade & Garza
- 83%: Mandy Rose over Sonya Deville
- 58%: Seth Rollins over Dominik Mysterio
- 79%: Asuka over Sasha Banks
- 31%: Drew McIntyre over Randy Orton
- 90%: Bray Wyatt over Braun Strowman
The results show that the easiest matches of the night to predict were Wyatt defeating Strowman, and Rose beating Deville. The trickiest match for the fan vote was McIntyre beating Orton.
Four of the eight matches were easy to predict, and the Cageside staff didn’t completely whiff on any of the remaining four matches, which means the overall predictability rating remained above average. Overall, the winners of these matches were not hard to see coming, despite the “You’ll never see it coming!” tagline for the pay-per-view.
The staff of Cageside Seats had a good night with predicting the winners at SummerSlam 2020. How did you fare, Cagesiders?