Did a little research tonight while watching the fights. Turns out, what I've thought for a long time is true, atleast for over a year now, but I'd wager it's been going on for alot longer.
When they got rid of the SOTN(aswell as KOTN) bonus and just started doing POTN, I saw that as a sign that they saw submission wins were declining. Now I have a bit of data to back that up.
Since UFC 200 back in July of 2016 and every event up to UFC 217 this November, 684 fights, across 57 events, only around 17% of fights on average are won by sub.
70% of those cards have 2 or less wins by sub. There was an entire event where not a single fight ended via submission, which was Gus vs Teixeira.
Seems like the most frequent number of subs occur during events that take place in... take a guess...
Brazil. Makes sense, you're going to have more BJJ blackbelts competing on a Brazilian card than run of the mill cards in the US, Canada or somewhere in Europe.
When you look at the champions, currenty, they aren't Jiu Jitsu based fighters generally. They might train it because you need to to be a well rounded fighter. But they aren't focusing on it in the same way that some fighters do. And that bit of data I have shows that most fighters coming up and even veterans aren't either, or atleast not anymore.
Dillashaw is a Wrestle-Kickboxer, Holloway is mostly a striker with a couple Guillotine wins, Conor is a Boxer/TaeKwonDo practitioner, who, has a brown belt apparently, but his only losses were via sub, 2 early in his career, one rather recently and he has 1 win via RNC. Woodley is a Brown Belt and actually has a few sub wins, but all were at the beginning of his career back in 2009, he's more of play it safe Wrestle Boxer now.
I can't really think of any champions right now that are submission machines, GSP finished Bisping via RNC, but that's his first sub win in almost a decade iirc.
Thought I'd share this with you guys so if you ever wonder how BJJ's presence in MMA is rn(atleast effective offensive BJJ), you can see it's declined quite a bit. Defensive Jiu Jitsu, both from top and bottom seem to be the norm nowadays.
I heard once before that it takes less time to learn how to defend a sub alone than to learn that aswell as how to attack with one, which makes perfect sense, you're spending half the time to learn how to stop rather than how to attack and focusing on other aspects of MMA. Another thing is submissions, unless you're exceptionally good at them and at a higher skill level than your opponent, are risky, because they can give up a potentially dominant pin or osaekomi waza for the Judo enthusiasts out there
.
When they got rid of the SOTN(aswell as KOTN) bonus and just started doing POTN, I saw that as a sign that they saw submission wins were declining. Now I have a bit of data to back that up.
Since UFC 200 back in July of 2016 and every event up to UFC 217 this November, 684 fights, across 57 events, only around 17% of fights on average are won by sub.
70% of those cards have 2 or less wins by sub. There was an entire event where not a single fight ended via submission, which was Gus vs Teixeira.
Seems like the most frequent number of subs occur during events that take place in... take a guess...
Brazil. Makes sense, you're going to have more BJJ blackbelts competing on a Brazilian card than run of the mill cards in the US, Canada or somewhere in Europe.
When you look at the champions, currenty, they aren't Jiu Jitsu based fighters generally. They might train it because you need to to be a well rounded fighter. But they aren't focusing on it in the same way that some fighters do. And that bit of data I have shows that most fighters coming up and even veterans aren't either, or atleast not anymore.
Dillashaw is a Wrestle-Kickboxer, Holloway is mostly a striker with a couple Guillotine wins, Conor is a Boxer/TaeKwonDo practitioner, who, has a brown belt apparently, but his only losses were via sub, 2 early in his career, one rather recently and he has 1 win via RNC. Woodley is a Brown Belt and actually has a few sub wins, but all were at the beginning of his career back in 2009, he's more of play it safe Wrestle Boxer now.
I can't really think of any champions right now that are submission machines, GSP finished Bisping via RNC, but that's his first sub win in almost a decade iirc.
Thought I'd share this with you guys so if you ever wonder how BJJ's presence in MMA is rn(atleast effective offensive BJJ), you can see it's declined quite a bit. Defensive Jiu Jitsu, both from top and bottom seem to be the norm nowadays.
I heard once before that it takes less time to learn how to defend a sub alone than to learn that aswell as how to attack with one, which makes perfect sense, you're spending half the time to learn how to stop rather than how to attack and focusing on other aspects of MMA. Another thing is submissions, unless you're exceptionally good at them and at a higher skill level than your opponent, are risky, because they can give up a potentially dominant pin or osaekomi waza for the Judo enthusiasts out there
.
