Common UFC Submissions: A Study By Numbers

**[Tycho?]** · Posted On: 6/16/2009 8:34am

Originally Posted by rordogs

from a research standpoint should you be including all the ufcs that have happened? i mean early ufc (1-20) was really style vs style, when is the point in time you would describe as mma became a discipline in itself and was pumping out credible fighters from credible coaches? shouldnt you be taking your data from that point onwards?

My starting point was always going to be arbitrary. Instead of just choosing an event to start at I just decided to do them all, even though the first events are way more varied and also have much crappier records (hence the large number of "other" submissions). I tried to counter-act that a bit in the year by year break down. The Unified Rules were put in place in 2000, so the 93-00 chart has most of the style vs style match-ups, and after that it becomes closer to modern MMA.

**[Tycho?]** · Posted On: 6/16/2009 8:36am

Originally Posted by 1point2

Leglocks are that poorly represented? Also, there's a Journal of Asian Martial Arts article that's directly related to this; it collected data on submission styles (traditional BJJ vs. more adventurous, giving-up-position sub grappling vs. GnP vs. kickboxing was the eventual breakdown). Fun facts: the only standing sub was a guillotine, tho now it includes that inverted backwards triangle recently.

The only thing that could improve those charts is the actual # of events, in addition to percentages.

Didn't Trigg tap to Hughes' RNC while still on his feet?

The number of events can be seen above the year-by-year charts. People on Sherdog (where I cross-posted this) were asking that too, so I added it after the fact.

**tideliar** · Posted On: 6/16/2009 9:33am

OP, this is nice stuff. I'm a scientists so it's nice to see random "stats" done just for fun. Is this for a piece of homework, or were you genuinely just curious and decided to investigate?

What was the hardest part of doing this, and what was the most fun?

**v1y** · Posted On: 6/16/2009 1:11pm

Originally Posted by War Wheel

There are more than 4. Off the top of my head Steven Graham tapped Dmitri Stepanov by keylock. Sherdog has it listed as "Armlock"; Wikipedia has it listed as "Submission". Severn tapped Dave Beneteau by the same (thanks to the Tripps). Whch are the 4 you counted?

well there's gonzaga/mccully, and nick catone won with one for sure...

i'm just saying that sherdog has the gonzaga/mccully one listed as "kimura", and it definitely was a keylock.

**[Tycho?]** · Posted On: 6/16/2009 1:53pm

Originally Posted by War Wheel

I respect what you are trying to do, but I am disturbed that you would have to choose between wretched hives of innacuracy like Sherdog and Wikipedia to get your results. Hackney tapped JS by rape choke. Regardless of what it says on the interwebz, that is what happened.

Jennum tapped because he head was literally being pushed through the fence. There was an Jennum-head sized imprint in it after he stood up.

Don't be afraid to actually watch the fights. If you can't find the fight, PM me.

In my post I said that Son did tap to the choke (I did end up watching that one). I'm sure Jennum was hurt when he tapped, but since its not a "real" submission that was used, I didn't count it in my study.

**[Tycho?]** · Posted On: 6/16/2009 1:58pm

Originally Posted by tideliar

OP, this is nice stuff. I'm a scientists so it's nice to see random "stats" done just for fun. Is this for a piece of homework, or were you genuinely just curious and decided to investigate?

What was the hardest part of doing this, and what was the most fun?

Not homework, genuinely curious and I did it for fun.

The hardest part was probably wading through crappy, unreliable records. I assumed before doing this that I'd be able to just copy the records right into my spreadsheet, but they're rife with errors. I had to double check a ton of them, including most of the subs before UFC 20. Learning spreadsheets wasn't exactly hard, but it was occasionally frustrating and I made numerous mistakes before I figured out a good way to do it.

There were two parts that were fun. One was just going through event by event and seeing weird stuff pop up. Did you know that after UFC 37, there was 37.5? Or that there is a sub called a bulldog choke that has been used twice in the UFC? etc.

The most fun was actually tabulating the results, and seeing what the numbers really were. That was the point after all, and it was very interesting to see how the numbers compared with my expectations.

**BSDaemon** · Posted On: 6/16/2009 2:29pm

Originally Posted by [Tycho?]

if you know for a fact that so-and-so beat whats-his-face by flying gogoplata at UFC 12 and not armbar like I have listed, tell me so I can fix it.

Dustin Hazelett defeated Tamdan McCrory at UFC 91 by omoplata. Many places have it listed as an armbar. I would argue that it was much closer to an omoplata than armbar.

**Jack Rusher** · Posted On: 6/16/2009 3:10pm

This is nice work. I look forward to seeing where it goes as you add more data and clean up any misfiled subs. Do you plan to add Pride stats?

**Yamabushi** · Posted On: 6/16/2009 3:29pm

Nice work, well done. My only comment is that "assorted" and "other" aren't really clear labels when you first look at the table. Given what they represent have you considered calling them something like "other" (for assorted) and "unclassified" (for other)? All in all though this is really a good piece of work and I, for one, am pleased you did it.

**tideliar** · Posted On: 6/16/2009 3:41pm

Originally Posted by BSDaemon

Dustin Hazelett defeated Tamdan McCrory at UFC 91 by omoplata. Many places have it listed as an armbar. I would argue that it was much closer to an omoplata than armbar.

Was that fight where Joe Rogan "called out" Mccrory for bad ground game because no one should get caught in omoplata at that level?

I might be mixing this up with a fight on TUF prelims where someone tapped from omoplata/gogoplata...