Tag: CagePotato Databomb

The BANG Effect: A Statistical Look at 2013?s Most Improved MMA Team [DATABOMB]


(Duane Ludwig [right] with one of his star pupils. / Photo via Sherdog)

By Reed Kuhn, @Fightnomics

An unlikely new coaching star, Duane “Bang” Ludwig has surged to the forefront of the competitive MMA coaching landscape after a fortuitous change of scenery. Ludwig is the obvious candidate for 2013’s “MMA Coach of the Year,” and few would question this, despite little fan awareness of his coaching prowess just one year ago.

Ludwig certainly had a tough 2012 that included three consecutive UFC losses, each one by first-round stoppage, the last of which added a fight-ending and career-threatening knee injury to the insult. But almost immediately after beginning the lengthy rehabilitation process, Ludwig got an unexpected phone call from Urijah Faber, and the creator of the Bang Muay Thai system suddenly migrated from the suburbs of Denver, Colorado to Sacramento, California.

Since Ludwig’s arrival at Team Alpha Male in December of 2012, his team’s fighters have been posting wins and highlight reel finishes at an unlikely pace. It’s even more unlikely, literally, when you consider the low share of TKO finishes that normally occur in the smaller weight classes where most Alpha Male fighters compete. The MMA media have been quick to point to the undeniable results of Team Alpha Male’s performance in the UFC as evidence that Ludwig was the missing ingredient to a team with championship potential. To be fair, the team already included former champions and contenders under Zuffa banners, but none that currently held a UFC belt. Now heading into this weekend’s UFC on FOX 9 card, Team Alpha Male has a chance to rack up not just four more wins, but capture its first UFC title of the Bang Era, and hold leading contender status in several divisions.

With all this hype around a team that is making a lot of noise, it’s a legitimate question to ask: Are they really better, or is this just a nice run of luck? The sudden emergence of Duane Ludwig as the MMA Coach of the Year is an extraordinary claim, and if Carl Sagan were still around (and an MMA fan), he would suggest that we demand extraordinary evidence before reaching such a bold conclusion. So I’m going to run the numbers in excruciating detail just to make sure.


(Duane Ludwig [right] with one of his star pupils. / Photo via Sherdog)

By Reed Kuhn, @Fightnomics

An unlikely new coaching star, Duane “Bang” Ludwig has surged to the forefront of the competitive MMA coaching landscape after a fortuitous change of scenery. Ludwig is the obvious candidate for 2013′s “MMA Coach of the Year,” and few would question this, despite little fan awareness of his coaching prowess just one year ago.

Ludwig certainly had a tough 2012 that included three consecutive UFC losses, each one by first-round stoppage, the last of which added a fight-ending and career-threatening knee injury to the insult. But almost immediately after beginning the lengthy rehabilitation process, Ludwig got an unexpected phone call from Urijah Faber, and the creator of the Bang Muay Thai system suddenly migrated from the suburbs of Denver, Colorado to Sacramento, California.

Since Ludwig’s arrival at Team Alpha Male in December of 2012, his team’s fighters have been posting wins and highlight reel finishes at an unlikely pace. It’s even more unlikely, literally, when you consider the low share of TKO finishes that normally occur in the smaller weight classes where most Alpha Male fighters compete. The MMA media have been quick to point to the undeniable results of Team Alpha Male’s performance in the UFC as evidence that Ludwig was the missing ingredient to a team with championship potential. To be fair, the team already included former champions and contenders under Zuffa banners, but none that currently held a UFC belt. Now heading into this weekend’s UFC on FOX 9 card, Team Alpha Male has a chance to rack up not just four more wins, but capture its first UFC title of the Bang Era, and hold leading contender status in several divisions.

With all this hype around a team that is making a lot of noise, it’s a legitimate question to ask: Are they really better, or is this just a nice run of luck? The sudden emergence of Duane Ludwig as the MMA Coach of the Year is an extraordinary claim, and if Carl Sagan were still around (and an MMA fan), he would suggest that we demand extraordinary evidence before reaching such a bold conclusion. So I’m going to run the numbers in excruciating detail just to make sure.

The data analyzed here includes all statistics from UFC fights for Urijah Faber, Joseph Benavidez, Chad Mendes, Danny Castillo, and TJ Dillashaw. Because WEC fights were in a smaller cage, stats from those fights will be skewed to contain more action and finishes. So this is an apples-to-apples comparison of the same five fighters in UFC fights only, before and after the arrival of their new coach. I’m not just interested in total wins and finishes, I want to know specifically how their performance in the Octagon has changed. I’ve got 21 fights for this group of fighters in the UFC leading up to December 2012, and then 14 more that have taken place since. Those are our before and after samples.

Now let’s see what they tell us.

What You’ve Already Heard:

Team Alpha Male has been winning. A lot. And not just winning, but finishing opponents. The implicit suggestion is that they’re doing better than before, but how much better? Here’s how the team’s fight performance looks comparing records before and after the arrival of Coach Bang Ludwig.

So the rumors are true. Team Alpha Male is indeed winning and finishing a lot of fights, and yes, even more so than before. They were already a winning group, but now they hardly ever lose. Their lone losing performance in 2013 was TJ Dillashaw’s gutsy split decision loss to Raphael Assuncao in Brazil. The rest were all victorious, and this doesn’t even include the recent TUF 18 winner Chris Holdsworth (too recent to be included in the analysis). During the course of racking up these 13 victories, Team Alpha Male fighters also finished nine of their opponents, seven via strikes. That’s a much higher finishing rate (and especially KO/TKO rate) than their division peers in the UFC.

But we knew that. What’s new here is that we can now dive much deeper into very specific performance variables on a per-fighter and per-round basis to understand exactly how Team Alpha Male has improved their relative performance.

Standup Striking Metrics

These findings are, well, striking. It turns out that Team Alpha Male has improved on literally every single key metric I follow for assessing striking performance in the UFC. These fighters have improved jab and power head striking accuracy, clinch accuracy, and even their striking defense. They’ve done all this while increasing their striking output relative to opponents and demonstrating greater cage control. In terms of power, they’ve more than doubled their collective knockdown rate on a punch-for-punch basis, and have yet to be knocked down themselves.

It would seem that the addition of a head coach that specializes in striking has made a huge impact on a team that was highly competitive to begin with. They’ve stepped up their striking game across the board, and improved their performance metrics in every meaningful offensive and defensive category. Now what else can we find?

Significant Striking Metrics

In terms of Significant Striking the team has increased their pace by 13%, and improved the overall rate at which they land strikes. Even in terms of defense, Team Alpha Male improved slightly on an already solid metric.

Significant Strikes include all strikes thrown at a distance, plus power strikes in the clinch and on the ground. They are a general, but also useful statistic to measure the overall effective output of a fighter, and by these metrics again the team has improved their performance across the board. But what about on the ground?

Wrestling Metrics

The last category of stats reflects wrestling, both in terms of offense and defense. The results show that these fighters are attempting fewer takedowns than previously, but have been more successful in their attempts. The wrestling-centric reputation of the old Team Alpha Male is at risk of fading given that their fighters are choosing to stand and trade more often. But that doesn’t mean their skills are getting rusty. On the contrary; the team has more than doubled their takedown success rate, have landed those takedowns with more force (more frequent slams), and have also defended a very high rate of attempts by their opponents. In terms of performance, they have once again improved in every category, but this time on the mat.

The Final Word

Whether these results are surprising is not really important. Analysis is still a valuable tool, even when it simply confirms what we already thought to be true. Many believed that Ludwig’s arrival in Sacramento marked an improvement in the team’s performance. But with these analytical findings, now we know that to be true. It’s not a small improvement, it’s significant, and it’s across the board. Team Alpha Male is now a new and improved breed of solid wrestlers that have added crisp and violent striking to their arsenal. While fans of the sport have shared the benefits that this team of “Uber Males” has brought to the UFC, opponents in the promotion’s smaller divisions should be justifiably concerned.

With Benavidez, Faber, Mendes, and Castillo all competing at the UFC on FOX 9 card in their home-field arena in Sacramento, a lot of attention will be given to their performance. In terms of market expectations, Benavidez is currently considered a slight underdog to incumbent champion Demetrious Johnson. Lines on the rest of the Alpha Males are still pending at the time of this writing, but I expect Faber to have a close matchup with McDonald, Castillo to be a possible underdog to Barboza, and Mendes to be the only one getting a clear favorite line over Lentz. These should all be fun fights to watch. But there’s a lot at risk here for Team Alpha Male who are still seeking their first UFC title, and for head coach Duane Ludwig, who is hoping to end 2013 with a Bang.

For more MMA science and stats, follow @Fightnomics on Twitter or on Facebook, and check out the soon-to-be-released book on MMA analytics at www.fightnomics.com/book.

CagePotato Databomb #17: Do MMA Finishing Rates Differ by Nationality?

(Click on the chart for the full-size version. For previous Databombs, click here.)

By Reed Kuhn, @Fightnomics

I get this question a lot: Which nation’s fighters finish the most fights? There’s a lot of bias loaded in the question, beginning with the assumption that there should be any difference at all. But what do the stats say? Which country finishes more fights than their peers? You sure you want to know?

Here are the finishing rates (winning performances only) for the top three nationalities that comprise 80% of all fights in the UFC. “All Other” nationalities are lumped together for a fourth category for reference. For this analysis I used all UFC fights that took place from 2008 through mid-2013. The most important data manipulation is that we have isolated each weight class, because as I’ve already shown: size matters when it comes to finish rates.

A good betting man should have guessed that there probably isn’t much difference between nationalities in MMA, and certainly not reliable ones. Most fighters have joined mainstream training camps and although matchmakers may book fighters to compete in certain events based on their home countries, that’s only after they’ve already made the cut for a UFC contract to begin with.

At a glance, the numbers show that Brazilians finish more overall (59%) than any other group. “All Other” fighters are next by finishing 58% of their aggregate wins. Americans (53%) come in just below the UFC average (54.5%), while Canadians bring up the rear (47%).

Brazilian fans rejoice, your fighters are most likely to end a fight in the Octagon “inside the distance.” American fighters, who are the most common competitors in the UFC, ride a consistent finish rate through the weight classes that parallels the overall UFC benchmarks for those divisions. Canadians, however, have a volatile finish rate that is high for small and large fighters, but low for fighters in the middle weight classes. This should push their overall average finish rate downward, since lightweight and welterweight divisions are the two largest (in terms of roster size) and most frequently competed.


(Click on the chart for the full-size version. For previous Databombs, click here.)

By Reed Kuhn, @Fightnomics

I get this question a lot: Which nation’s fighters finish the most fights? There’s a lot of bias loaded in the question, beginning with the assumption that there should be any difference at all. But what do the stats say? Which country finishes more fights than their peers? You sure you want to know?

Here are the finishing rates (winning performances only) for the top three nationalities that comprise 80% of all fights in the UFC. “All Other” nationalities are lumped together for a fourth category for reference. For this analysis I used all UFC fights that took place from 2008 through mid-2013. The most important data manipulation is that we have isolated each weight class, because as I’ve already shown: size matters when it comes to finish rates.

A good betting man should have guessed that there probably isn’t much difference between nationalities in MMA, and certainly not reliable ones. Most fighters have joined mainstream training camps and although matchmakers may book fighters to compete in certain events based on their home countries, that’s only after they’ve already made the cut for a UFC contract to begin with.

At a glance, the numbers show that Brazilians finish more overall (59%) than any other group. “All Other” fighters are next by finishing 58% of their aggregate wins. Americans (53%) come in just below the UFC average (54.5%), while Canadians bring up the rear (47%).

Brazilian fans rejoice, your fighters are most likely to end a fight in the Octagon “inside the distance.” American fighters, who are the most common competitors in the UFC, ride a consistent finish rate through the weight classes that parallels the overall UFC benchmarks for those divisions. Canadians, however, have a volatile finish rate that is high for small and large fighters, but low for fighters in the middle weight classes. This should push their overall average finish rate downward, since lightweight and welterweight divisions are the two largest (in terms of roster size) and most frequently competed.

Surely, haters of Georges St-Pierre will conclude that he’s responsible for dragging down the average of his countrymen, and indeed he only finished two of nine fights during the period of analysis. Removing his fights from the sample however, might boost the Canadian finish rate for the welterweight division, but the overall finish rate would only climb to 49%, a bump of just one percent that still leaves Canada at the bottom of the heap.

There’s more to this riddle. First, Canada has the smallest sample size of the bunch, and therefore their data is inherently more volatile. The high finish rate for the Bantamweight division is from four fights, while the perfect scores at Light Heavyweight and Heavyweight are from just one fight each. So while their average is low in the center of the weight classes, it’s also possible that there will be a regression to the mean in years to come. Secondly, and more importantly, Canada has the fewest fights of any group above lightweight, where finish rates are higher.

Brazilians on the other hand, have the most fighters competing in the larger divisions, which is likely inflating their overall finish rate average. “All Other” fighters also have a larger percentage of fighters that compete above Lightweight, so naturally their finish rate is slightly higher than average. And the largest sample size of all, the Americans, sit right in the middle in terms of their share of larger fighters and also very closely align with the UFC average.

So can we conclude that there is a national pecking order to UFC ferocity and finish rates? No, not really. What this analysis shows is that in a macro-scale, there aren’t many differences between fighters born in different countries once they start competing at the highest levels. Most importantly, the mix of roster spots among the weight divisions is a stronger driver of overall finish rates.

More specific than overall finish rates would be performance metrics in striking, wrestling, and submission disciplines. In these areas we might see more pronounced differences by nationalities — and that analysis is coming soon. Anybody want to make an early prediction? Which country’s fighters produce the most accurate or powerful strikes? Who has the best wrestling skills, and who has the best submission game? The answers might surprise you…

For more MMA science and stats, follow @Fightnomics on Twitter or on Facebook, and check out the soon-to-be-released book on MMA analytics at www.fightnomics.com/book.

CagePotato Databomb #16: The Rise of Striking Pace in the UFC


(Click on the chart for the full-size version. For previous Databombs, click here.)

By Reed Kuhn, @Fightnomics

During the controversial formative years of the UFC, the sport of Mixed Martial Arts looked a lot different. One could argue it wasn’t even MMA just yet. But somewhere between John McCain branding it “human cockfighting” and the modern MMA that shows up live on network TV in primetime, many aspects of the sport evolved.

So let’s take a very simple look at the activity pace of UFC fighters over time. The graph above shows the average annual total strike attempts per fighter per minute. The trend is pretty obvious.

The average total strikes thrown per minute has been climbing steadily over the years. Fully telling the story of why will take some more analysis and a few more charts, but two big reasons contributing to the trend are smaller weight classes and evolving time in position.


(Click on the chart for the full-size version. For previous Databombs, click here.)

By Reed Kuhn, @Fightnomics

During the controversial formative years of the UFC, the sport of Mixed Martial Arts looked a lot different. One could argue it wasn’t even MMA just yet. But somewhere between John McCain branding it “human cockfighting” and the modern MMA that shows up live on network TV in primetime, many aspects of the sport evolved.

So let’s take a very simple look at the activity pace of UFC fighters over time. The graph above shows the average annual total strike attempts per fighter per minute. The trend is pretty obvious.

The average total strikes thrown per minute has been climbing steadily over the years. Fully telling the story of why will take some more analysis and a few more charts, but two big reasons contributing to the trend are smaller weight classes and evolving time in position.

Overall, smaller weight classes tend to average a slightly higher pace of activity. And that’s even accepting the fact that fights in smaller divisions last longer than heavier weight classes due to lower finish rates. So despite testing their cardio harder in longer fights, smaller fighters manage to press the pace more than heavier ones.

A second big factor is that over the same period of MMA evolution, the portion of fights spent in a standup striking position has also increased. This may surprise some the same people who boo loudly every time fighters go to ground, but the average number of minutes fights spend on the mat has been steadily decreasing with time. While standing, both fighters are able to engage in striking activity. This too boosts the average pace of action as measured by striking activity.

On its current pace of advancement, UFC fighters will be averaging 10 total strike attempts per minute by 2016, unless other forces act to counter the historical trend. But there’s one more trend that is likely to continue pushing things forward: competition.

Over the last decade, competition has increased as the sport has grown in popularity, and more full-time athletes are competing in the Octagon. Training has improved, expectations have risen, and the amount of fame and fortune at stake in any given fight climbs steadily upward. These powerful competitive forces have also elevated the pace of fighting and the quality of action in the UFC.

For more MMA science and stats, follow @Fightnomics on Twitter or on Facebook. Catch up on Reed Kuhn’s MMA analytical research at www.fightnomics.com, or check out the soon-to-be-released book on MMA analytics at www.fightnomics.com/book.

CagePotato Databomb #15: For UFC Bonuses, It Pays to Fight Last


(Click on the chart for the full-size version. For previous Databombs, click here.)

By Reed Kuhn, @Fightnomics

A hot topic in the news lately has been UFC Fight Night Bonuses. This includes the end of event bonuses awarded to the Fight of the Night (FOTN), Knockout of the Night (KOTN), and Submission of the Night (SOTN). Officially, UFC president Dana White says those bonuses are here to stay, which is great news for perpetually exciting fighters like Joe Lauzon, Donald Cerrone, and Frankie Edgar. Bonuses incentivize performance, spread the wealth, and give guys who give their all an official metric for justifying their place on the Zuffa roster.

I’ve already covered the timeline of awarded bonuses, so the natural next question concerns who actually receives them. Now that the standardized Fight Night bonus is fixed at $50,000, regardless of what channel a UFC event is broadcast on, let’s examine a different layer of detail.

What I’ve graphed above is the percentage likelihood of winning a Fight Night bonus based solely on card placement. This particular DataBomb will surely make the heads of some prelim fighters feel like they want to explode.

Indeed, it pays to fight last. It turns out that the fighters competing in the highest profile spots on the fight card are also the most likely to win Fight Night Bonuses. Is that fair? That (presumably) the highest-paid fighters also get more than their share of bonus money? If you’re fighting in a Main Event you have more than a one-in-three chance of winning a bonus of some kind, with most of those bonuses not requiring a finish, or even a win. Whereas towards the bottom of the preliminary cards, fighters average only a one-in-ten chance of taking home a bonus, and more likely require a win inside the distance to do so.

But not so fast…


(Click on the chart for the full-size version. For previous Databombs, click here.)

By Reed Kuhn, @Fightnomics

A hot topic in the news lately has been UFC Fight Night Bonuses. This includes the end of event bonuses awarded to the Fight of the Night (FOTN), Knockout of the Night (KOTN), and Submission of the Night (SOTN). Officially, UFC president Dana White says those bonuses are here to stay, which is great news for perpetually exciting fighters like Joe Lauzon, Donald Cerrone, and Frankie Edgar. Bonuses incentivize performance, spread the wealth, and give guys who give their all an official metric for justifying their place on the Zuffa roster.

I’ve already covered the timeline of awarded bonuses, so the natural next question concerns who actually receives them. Now that the standardized Fight Night bonus is fixed at $50,000, regardless of what channel a UFC event is broadcast on, let’s examine a different layer of detail.

What I’ve graphed above is the percentage likelihood of winning a Fight Night bonus based solely on card placement. This particular DataBomb will surely make the heads of some prelim fighters feel like they want to explode.

Indeed, it pays to fight last. It turns out that the fighters competing in the highest profile spots on the fight card are also the most likely to win Fight Night Bonuses. Is that fair? That (presumably) the highest-paid fighters also get more than their share of bonus money? If you’re fighting in a Main Event you have more than a one-in-three chance of winning a bonus of some kind, with most of those bonuses not requiring a finish, or even a win. Whereas towards the bottom of the preliminary cards, fighters average only a one-in-ten chance of taking home a bonus, and more likely require a win inside the distance to do so.

But not so fast. As has been speculated before, the bump of bonuses on the main card may be a reflection of the higher skill level of the fighters who compete there. Basically, knocking a guy out who is highly ranked is inherently more impressive than finishing an undercard fighter. Bonuses, therefore, reflect the level of difficulty that increases as the event approaches its conclusion, and factor in the overall level of difficulty in performing at a high level against better competition.

This may be a factor. Certainly, a Fight of the Night bonus requires not one, but both fighters to be in great shape and able to fight through a back and forth war. In theory, main events feature the most talented fighters of any given card, and correspondingly result in a whopping 36% of those fighters taking home some form of Fight Night bonus on top of other compensation. A fighter in any given spot on the main card will average a 14.7% FOTN bonus rate, while being on the prelim card results in a measly 3.2% FOTN average. That’s a huge drop, and far more than Knockout and Submission averages across the card.

But the main card bump in finishing bonuses may also be reflecting other factors. First, larger fighters are more likely to command main card presence. This may be due to their higher finish rates, or just the general fan’s appetite for bigger weight classes. Bigger fighters sell tickets, and generally deliver for the fans by scoring more knockouts. This may be an additional factor in the KOTN average being 6.4% for main card fighters, but only 2.4% for fighters on the prelims.

The same trends of division size and card placement may also work in reverse for submissions, which are the most stable bonus type across the card. Main card fighters take home 4.6% of these bonuses per spot, while prelim fighters average 3.5%. Not a huge drop. Overall, submissions are more rare than (T)KO’s so sometimes the selection of a SOTN winner is easier. And perhaps the idea of a skillful submission is also better able to stand alone in our minds, regardless of card placement, allowing undercard fighters a fairer shot at the bonus.

But look more closely at the #5 and #6 spots on the card. Despite nearly identical rates for finish bonuses, rates for the more subjective Fight of the Night bonuses drop from over 13% on the bottom of the main card to just 6% at the top of the preliminaries. Is there really that much of a difference in quality and skill of fighters between those two positions on the card? Probably not. Watch out folks: science!

At the end of the night, what stands out in our minds? Was it a devastating 10-second KO on the Facebook prelims, or was it as highly ranked fighter getting unexpectedly TKO’d by a new contender? Our tendency to remember more recent events is most commonly described as the “Availability Heuristic.” Basically, what comes to mind when we try to recall things is the information and memories that are most readily available. And that means most fresh in our minds. More specifically, some call it “Recency Bias,” and that bias is a powerful underlying psychological influence on the end of night decision to award bonuses. It’s why entertainment programs always try to “end with a bang,” or in the UFC’s case, the main event. It’s why cruise ships save their best dinner for last, and why Disney World has fireworks every single night. When searching for superlative memories (the best or worst of something) it’s always easier to remember the fights that are most fresh in our minds, and in the case of MMA fights that means the last few fights of the night. We’d like to think that everyone has a fair shot at Fight Night bonuses. But that’s unrealistic, if only because the people who decide who wins that are human after all.

So now that we know that Fight Night Bonuses are here to stay, we have to ask ourselves whether or not they are serving the proper purpose, or simply falling prey to more fundamental trends. Do they truly reward the most exemplary performances? Or are they simply padding the wallets of the highest earning fighters in the UFC? Would fans and fighters alike prefer to see the $200,000 in bonus money per event be allocated to the dozen or so fighters on the bottom of the card? An even salary allocation would give an additional $14,286 to each undercard fighter for the typical 12-fight card. In many cases, that would more than double the base pay that these fighters receive to show.

As with many managerial decisions, it’s always good to run the numbers first while exploring options. Let the matter of Who Wins Fight Night Bonuses now be settled. The next question might be if this system is the right one.

For more science and statistics of MMA, follow Fightnomics on Twitter or Facebook, or check out the Fightnomics blog.

CagePotato Databomb #14: The Rise, Fall, and Flattening of UFC Bonuses


(Click on the chart for the full-size version. For previous Databombs, click here.)

By Reed Kuhn, @Fightnomics

In March I made the trip to Montreal for UFC 156 and was puzzled by a financial observation. If the $50,000 Fight Night bonuses for that card sounded small for a pay-per-view event, well, that’s because they were. At least they were “low” when put into historical context, and they’ve been that way ever since.

But let’s start with the big picture with our first DataBomb to have dollars as a unit of measure. The chart above displays the official Fight Night Bonus amount published for Fight of the Night, Knockout of the Night, and Submission of the Night for numbered UFC events since UFC 61 in 2006 through UFC 162 earlier this month. Like Chael Sonnen closing a Skype interview: Kaaaaa…boom.

The Rise of the UFC in the Mid-2000’s

Let’s put this in context. The end of 2006 was a great time for the UFC. In addition to seasons three and four of the smash hit reality series The Ultimate Fighter, the promotion closed out the year with a defining moment in UFC 66. Headlined by future hall of fame superstars Chuck Liddell and Tito Ortiz, the event drew more than one million pay-per-view purchases, a first for the still maturing organization.

It may then come as a surprise that Liddell and Ortiz each only received a $30,000 bonus for their Fight of the Night performance. But not really, because we should all know that there’s a lag between success and financial reward. These same fight night bonus amounts would double by UFC 81 just over a year later when they hit $60,000 for the first time. For part-time fighters on the undercard only making “three and three” back then (i.e., $3,000 to fight and another $3,000 for a win), a windfall $60,000 bonus was potentially life-changing. And bonuses weren’t done growing yet.


(Click on the chart for the full-size version. For previous Databombs, click here.)

By Reed Kuhn, @Fightnomics

In March I made the trip to Montreal for UFC 156 and was puzzled by a financial observation. If the $50,000 Fight Night bonuses for that card sounded small for a pay-per-view event, well, that’s because they were. At least they were “low” when put into historical context, and they’ve been that way ever since.

But let’s start with the big picture with our first DataBomb to have dollars as a unit of measure. The chart above displays the official Fight Night Bonus amount published for Fight of the Night, Knockout of the Night, and Submission of the Night for numbered UFC events since UFC 61 in 2006 through UFC 162 earlier this month. Like Chael Sonnen closing a Skype interview: Kaaaaa…boom.

The Rise of the UFC in the Mid-2000’s

Let’s put this in context. The end of 2006 was a great time for the UFC. In addition to seasons three and four of the smash hit reality series The Ultimate Fighter, the promotion closed out the year with a defining moment in UFC 66. Headlined by future hall of fame superstars Chuck Liddell and Tito Ortiz, the event drew more than one million pay-per-view purchases, a first for the still maturing organization.

It may then come as a surprise that Liddell and Ortiz each only received a $30,000 bonus for their Fight of the Night performance. But not really, because we should all know that there’s a lag between success and financial reward. These same fight night bonus amounts would double by UFC 81 just over a year later when they hit $60,000 for the first time. For part-time fighters on the undercard only making “three and three” back then (i.e., $3,000 to fight and another $3,000 for a win), a windfall $60,000 bonus was potentially life-changing. And bonuses weren’t done growing yet.

The Highs

The biggest ever bonus winners came at UFC 129, with bonuses appropriately set at $129,000 each. With an estimated 55,000 attendees, the event was the largest UFC show in history and was held at the Toronto Rogers Centre, a stadium venue normally reserved for Major League Baseball Games. The event also had two title belts on the line, with Georges St-Pierre defeating Jake Shields and Jose Aldo outlasting Mark Hominick.

Two other events topped the six-figure bonus mark, each one a special occasion for Zuffa. The first time UFC fighters saw bonuses of $100,000 was the summer of 2009 at the blockbuster UFC 100 event. Again, two belts were on the line for the historic (but not exactly 100th) UFC event, with GSP defending against Thiago Alves, and Brock Lesnar unifying the heavyweight belt via TKO of Frank Mir. Amazingly, future champion Jon Jones also competed on the card, but was buried on the prelims in what was at the time only his third UFC appearance.

Most recently, Zuffa awarded $100,000 bonuses at UFC 134 in the highly publicized return to Brazil. The card was stacked with high profile fighters, capped with an Anderson Silva striking clinic against Yushin Okami, and signified a new Zuffa commitment to the booming Brazil market. 

UFC 156: Flat Is the New Up

Since 2011, Fight Night Bonuses have been consistently above $60,000, and more typically in the $65,000 to $75,000 range. But the trend since the beginning of 2012 has been downward. Why the kitty failed to gain ground in recent years is the mystery that has yet to be resolved, but may be tied to the maturation of the core US market. It was at UFC 156 in Montreal that the official news came: all UFC event bonuses would be $50,000 going forward. This “normalization” meant that there was no longer any downside for bonus seekers competing on lower profile (i.e., TUF Finale, UFC on FUEL) fight cards. But it also meant that the occasional $75,000 or even $100,000 windfalls that changed the lives of some exciting fighters were gone. Many in the US have already dealt with the realities of stagnant growth: Flat is the new up.

The notable exception is what we may call “the Caraway Effect.” The only blip in bonus amounts since the new policy took effect was at UFC 159, when (allegedly) Bryan Caraway convinced Dana White to boost bonuses to $65,000 to match the last time Caraway fought at UFC 149. That comment was based on the fact that Caraway won the Fight of the Night bonus at UFC 149. In a strange twist, Caraway went on to receive the Submission of the Night bonus at UFC 159 thanks to a positive drug test by Pat Healy. Coincidence? Or genius?

Mandatory disclaimer: This is publically reported information and doesn’t capture everything. Zuffa can, and often does, compensate fighters above their listed salaries and Fight Night Bonuses via what is referred to as “locker room bonuses.” We should keep in mind that Zuffa essentially pays most of its fighters more than they’ve agreed to pay them contractually, whether it’s public or not. This is unusual and generous by the standards of most occupations, despite the low average pay compared to mainstream American sports. Such is the nature of a sport struggling for wider audiences.

The data presented here represents concrete payouts, and in aggregate also reflects the trends of the organization’s growth. Zuffa has a business to run, and the bottom line is a critical driver for their ability to continue to grow the sport. For the fighters’ sakes, we hope that base salaries are increasing to mitigate the risk associated with competing professionally in the UFC, and to properly share the financial success of the business with those who risk the most to ensure it. In the next DataBomb we’ll look to see who actually wins these fight night bonuses.

For more on the science and stats of MMA, follow @Fightnomics on Twitter and on Facebook. See more MMA analytical research at www.fightnomics.com.

CagePotato Databomb #13: How Often Are UFC Fights Finished?


(Click on the chart for the full-size version. For previous Databombs, click here.)

By Reed Kuhn, @Fightnomics

How many UFC fights end inside the distance? The overall percentage is 60%, which includes fights all the way back to 1993. But at the halfway point of 2013, that number is only 50%, year to date. I’d say “roughly 50%” but it’s not — it’s precisely 50%. Out of 176 fights so far in 2013, 88 have been finished by (T)KO or submission. That’s exactly half. How does that stack up with prior years in the UFC? Well, here’s the annual finish rate for UFC fights by year, with 2013 recorded through UFC 161.

The bad news for fans of highlight reel finishes is that the overall trend is down. But the good news is that the recent trend is completely flat, which is a level of stability never before seen in the UFC. As in troubled economies, after a steep decline “flat” starts looking like the new “up.” But there are other patterns underlying the movement of this line.

A closer look at the historical finish rate reveals how this metric is impacted by various drivers. First, notice that all fights ended in the first two years of the UFC. That’s because there was no other option; fighters fought until one of them won. There were no time limits, and no judges. When time limits were introduced in 1995, we see that immediately some fights went the distance, though they were all “draws” at first. Judges were brought in at the end of that year to declare winners of fights that went the distance, and the overall parity of competition improved throughout the decade forcing their involvement more frequently.

But it was the institution of weight classes that give us the best insight into the trends during the modern Zuffa era…


(Click on the chart for the full-size version. For previous Databombs, click here.)

By Reed Kuhn, @Fightnomics

How many UFC fights end inside the distance? The overall percentage is 60%, which includes fights all the way back to 1993. But at the halfway point of 2013, that number is only 50%, year to date. I’d say “roughly 50%” but it’s not — it’s precisely 50%. Out of 176 fights so far in 2013, 88 have been finished by (T)KO or submission. That’s exactly half. How does that stack up with prior years in the UFC? Well, here’s the annual finish rate for UFC fights by year, with 2013 recorded through UFC 161.

The bad news for fans of highlight reel finishes is that the overall trend is down. But the good news is that the recent trend is completely flat, which is a level of stability never before seen in the UFC. As in troubled economies, after a steep decline “flat” starts looking like the new “up.” But there are other patterns underlying the movement of this line.

A closer look at the historical finish rate reveals how this metric is impacted by various drivers. First, notice that all fights ended in the first two years of the UFC. That’s because there was no other option; fighters fought until one of them won. There were no time limits, and no judges. When time limits were introduced in 1995, we see that immediately some fights went the distance, though they were all “draws” at first. Judges were brought in at the end of that year to declare winners of fights that went the distance, and the overall parity of competition improved throughout the decade forcing their involvement more frequently.

But it was the institution of weight classes that give us the best insight into the trends during the modern Zuffa era. When finish rates hit a decade high of 75% in 2005, it was the first full year the UFC went without lightweight fights. Lightweights were officially brought back in 2006, and by 2007 the division became the most commonly competed weight class, with more fights taking place at 155 pounds than in any other division. (That has remained true every year since.) During this time, finish rates dropped 13% overall, reflecting the mix of smaller fighters. Rebounding in 2008, the finish rate hit 68% in a year where slightly more fights occurred in heavier divisions than in years prior. But this composition of divisions quickly went on a diet, and over the next two years fighters began migrating down weight classes and tilting the scales towards smaller divisions.

This period in 2009-2010 saw the greatest decline in finish rates combined with the rapid increase in televised UFC events, and likely an overall increase in the competitiveness within the UFC. In 2010 the first featherweights were introduced before the year’s end, with the WEC merger taking full effect in 2011. By 2012 the first flyweights hit the Octagon, and by then half of all UFC fights occurred at lightweight or below.

The most interesting trend to note is that despite the slimming trend for UFC fighters, the overall finish rate has completely stabilized since 2010. As we saw earlier smaller divisions generally finish fewer fights, due primarily to less knockout power, but the dropoff stabilizes in the smallest divisions. So despite more and more fights in the flyweight through featherweight divisions, the finish rate is no longer dropping with the declining share of heavier fights.

The rapid evolution of MMA has forced athletes to step up their game. We’ll explain how submissions have evolved over time another day, but it’s safe to say that the overall level of grappling talent in the UFC has also gone up, which may be a contributing factor to some of the historical decline in finish rates. What will be interesting is how this trend evolves now that the UFC is approaching a stable mix of divisions. Despite the ever-increasing level of talent and athleticism in the UFC, fighters are still finishing opponents half of the time — which is impressive all by itself.

For more on the science and stats of MMA, follow @Fightnomics on Twitter and on Facebook. See more MMA analytical research at www.fightnomics.com.