Recently, we uncovered historical data which revealed that Hideo Tokoro competed in a 165lb fight early in his career.  This is a Welterweight fight, and marks Tokoro’s 6th weight division that he has competed in.  He is the only fighter (so far, that we know of) who has competed in more than 5 weight divisions at the professional MMA level.  He needs only to compete at Flyweight and Light Heavyweight to complete the cycle.

Check out our Records & Statistics page to see the full list for this statistic, as well as many others.

According to Sherdog, Murilo Bustamante, 44, will fight on, making his debut in the Welterweight division against [#70] Yuyi Shirai on July 20th.  Bustamante currently holds the “longest career” record for active (and probably all) fighters, and this next fight will stretch his career length to nearly 20 years.  Bustamante is currently ranked in the Middleweight division (albeit very low) and is also our #7 All-Time Middleweight.

To see more records, check out our MMA Records & Stats page.

We’re not quite halfway through the year, but I wanted to post about this in case I forgot.  Just in case you did not know (or forgot), we have an awards page that we will populate after the end of each year that covers a wide array of categories.  For more particulars, please visit that page.

Mid-Year Awards

Fighter of the Year (Male): Jon Jones

Fighter of the Year (Female): No qualifiers yet

Rookie of the Year (Male): Mansour Barnaoui

Rookie of the Year (Female): No qualifiers yet

Most Noteworthy Match: Georges St. Pierre UD(5) Jake Shields

Most Lopsided Upset: Robert Peralta SD(3) Hiroyuki Takaya

Most Noteworthy Upset: Antonio Silva TKO(2) Fedor Emelianenko

The highest win percentage by a nationality fighting in another country (with a minimum of 100 results) has been achieved by Brazilians fighting in the United States.  They have won at a percentage of 65.5%.

On the other hand, Japanese fighters in the United States have only achieved a paltry 39.2%.

Note: Draws were excluded.

Being involved (prior to Fight Matrix) in the rating system at BoxRec, I discovered many of the factors that prove to be advantages (or disadvantages) to fighters.  One of them was the advantage of fighting on home soil.  This seems pretty obvious, but the advantage was MASSIVE, much larger than you’d expect.  Due to the maturity and availability of data at BoxRec, we were able to determine that this advantage was more directly correlated with a promoter advantage as nationality isn’t always “cut and dry”, case in point, the many eastern European fighters making their money in Germany.

In the end, we decided not to implement this into the rating system as it did have some difficulties; some boxing cards have multiple promoters and fans would find it strange that this influence was factored out of the ratings.  Anyway, from the start of Fight Matrix we have collected nationality data and most recently, I have routines that give a “best guess” as to where a fight took place.  I wanted to look at data regarding American fighters, as it was the most plentiful.  Anyway, here we go:

By the way, be prepared to be surprised.

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If I get a chance, I’ll make the lines easier to follow, but this is a list of the proportion of divisional bouts (using our limits — men only) taking place within a calendar year.  In other words, 27.6% of bouts in 2001 that we have division info for, took place at Heavyweight.

Here is a summary data chart for the presented data:

I suppose this data could be somewhat influenced by my data mining and availability.  After all, it was much easier to assume that Dan Severn fought an indie bout in 2001 at Heavyweight than to figure out if Matt Hughes fought at Welter or Middle, at a random Extreme Challenge event.

That aside, the trends don’t lie.  The proportions of Light Heavyweight and Heavyweight have taken drastic drops since 2001 in the amount of bouts that have taken place at those divisions.  Middleweight has stayed pretty constant throughout, while the lighter divisions have seen a huge increase in bouts.  Check out Flyweight, with a proportion increase of almost 3 times!

Today, we’re going to look at a fighter’s prime, and if a distinctive peak period can be ascertained by looking at a combination of age AND “career age” (time between debut date and fight date).  In most professional sports, it’s usually agreed upon that a person’s prime is between their late 20s and early-mid 30s, with women having the potential of reaching this prime a few years later.

First, I took all of the fight outcomes where a fighter had a valid birth date and grouped my counts by age and career age.

For the record, a fighter’s first year is treated as year 0, just like a person’s age.

The Top 5 most common combinations are:

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With almost 3,000 birthdates now (nearly twice as many as before), we’re now going to see if fighters get more complacent with age.  This analysis looks at almost 28,000 fights, which I consider to be an acceptable sample set.

Furthermore, I am only analyzing wins with known outcome types and am considered a finish as a TKO, KO, DQ or SUB.

I thought the increased sample set would help matters, but the peak after 40 is larger than ever and even starts in the late 30s this time.  The logarithmic trendline still follows through with a consistent descent, but is nearly even at the end of the age range.

Are the older fighters likely fighting other older fighters and the eventual loser does not have the stamina to finish the fights?  Or are the older fighters more likely to take soft touches?

The sample set is now even more pronounced in that it is reflecting mainly the 21-31 year old fighters, so it’s as if the trendline knows (without me telling it) that the weight supports data on the left side moreso than the right.

Today, we look at the rate of stoppage losses and how it affects aging fighters.  The critics against older fighters competing should have a good time with this one.

First, a few notes.

• I included TKOs, KOs, and DQs in the stoppages.
• The “dotted line” represents the sample average.
• The “red line” represents the trendline — helping to smooth out the peaks and valleys.

The limits of the sample set shine through in this analysis, so I decided to toss the trend-line in.  For the younger fighters, the stoppages account for less than 25% of the losses, but notice how that nearly doubles (on a trend-line basis) once the fighters get into their 40s.

A little disclaimer before viewing the following results.

Obviously, the fighters we actually have birthdates are, for the most part, more “well known” than the fighters who we don’t have birthdates for.  So, in the following, you can’t compare to a 50% win percentage (you can’t anyway, because draws are included), you’ll have to compare to the sample average.  Having said that…

Win % by Age

In the above graph, the dotted line represents the sample average.  I’m very surprised at the almost impeccable trend downward, which starts all the way at the beginning when the fighters are in their teens.  The teenage group boasts an astounding 79.8% win percentage.

The spike after age 39 is undoubtedly a result of the few ageless wonders that we’ve seen in the recent years of MMA, carefully picking and choosing their spots rather than retiring.

This was spurred on by the Bloody Elbow/Fight Metric Research Contest.  I wonder if using FM data makes it ineligible?

Whatever the case is, here I am with another “stat geek” article for our readers’ consumption.   Some notes before I get into the bulk of it:

• 1,361 fighters have valid birthdates in the database (this is a relatively new data attribute for us).
• 4,317 pro fights have two fighters with a valid birthdate.
• 4,062 pro fights are used in this analysis (excluded draws and no contests) when both fighters need a valid birthdate.
• 18,898 pro fights are used in this analysis (excluded draws and no contests) when only one fighter needs a valid birthdate.

As you can see, not the largest sample set, but a decent amount nonetheless.

For starters, the average MMA fighter (at the time of the fight) was 10,198 days old.  If you divide this by 365.2425 (don’t hate on leap years), you get a yearly result of 27.92… so roughly 27 years and 11 months.

The winner, on average, was 126 days younger.  Although slim, this is pretty substantial considering the data set.

The oldest fighter in the analysis at the time of the fight?  Dan Severn.  He’s the oldest winner AND oldest loser.

The youngest fighter?  Nam Jin Jo.  Now, I’m not sure if this is legit, but he was only 5,346 days old (a little over 14 years and 7 months) when he beat Jin Woo Kim in a 2005 Spirit MC show.

The oldest combined age in a fight, by far, took place when Randy Couture beat Mark Coleman — nearly 92 years.

More to come…

BloodyElbow recently took a close look at prospects around the sport.  They (as far as I know) did not use set criteria like we do, but it is interesting to see that some fights are on both lists.  Furthermore, it will be interesting to re-visit this and see how many fighters are eventually picked up by known organizations.

The following prospects fulfilled the following criteria:

• Have not fought in any of the “Big 15” organizations.  Please see the FAQ for more info.
• Have no more than one defeat.
• Have five wins or more.
• Have fought in the last 450 days.

Sorted by current rating

Heavyweight+

1. Shamil Abdurahimov (12-1-0) [BE #2 HW]
2. Guram Gughenishvili (11-0-0) [BE #1 HW]
3. Chris Barnett (6-1-0)
4. Tony Johnson Jr. (5-1-0) [BE #3 HW]
5. Thiago Santos (8-1-0)

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