Nate highlighted Josh Gross’s piece about the lack of submissions in the past few UFC cards and whether or not it’s becoming a trend in MMA. Being a big follower of sabermetrics and sabermetric thought, it irks me when people make blanket statements based strictly off personal observation. I assume Gross has access to a fight database, and it wouldn’t be hard to test his theories with concrete data. I’m not as lazy though, so here you go:
ALL STATS UFC ONLY
Since September 2000 (introduction of the Unified Rules)
845 fights
222 submissions26.3% submission rate
In the past 3 years
545 fights
149 submissions27.3% submission rate
In the past 2 years
386 fights
103 submissions26.7% submission rate
In the past year
204 fights
47 submissions23.1% submission rate
It’s safe to say the average submission rate is probably between 25-27%. I wouldn’t look to deep into the lowered rate in the last year either. Adding just 5 submissions raises the rate to 25.5%. Josh, in my opinion, is speaking wholly on conjecture and doesn’t have much of a case here.