The Decline of the Finish

Let me analyze the 6,012 fights in your dataset to see how they end.

Nearly half of all UFC fights go to decision (46%). Knockouts and TKOs account for about a third (34%), while submissions are the least common at 20%.

You're absolutely right. The physics of fighting changes dramatically with weight.

At heavyweight, 55% of fights end in KO/TKO - more than half. Drop down to flyweight and it's only 22%. The pattern is clear: bigger fighters hit harder, and fights end faster. Flyweights go to decision 59% of the time.

That's one of the more interesting trends in the data. Let me pull the numbers from 2010 to 2020.

Submissions dropped from 23% in 2010 to around 16% by 2019. Meanwhile, decisions have crept up from 49% to over 50%. The fighters are getting better at defending submissions, and takedown defense has improved across the sport. The era of the pure grappler is fading.

The red corner advantage is real, but not for the reason you might think. The UFC assigns the higher-ranked or favored fighter to the red corner, so the advantage is mostly about matchmaking, not the corner itself.

At heavyweight, the red corner wins 74% of the time. But at lighter weights like bantamweight and flyweight, it drops to around 60%. The heavier divisions have more variance - one punch can change everything, so upsets are more common. Lighter fighters have longer, more technical fights where skill advantages play out more consistently.