At UFC 97, former lightheavyweight champion Chuck Liddell will break a UFC record as soon as he steps into the Octagon for the twenty-second time in his career. Liddell will pull ahead of his long-time rival Tito Ortiz, with whom he currently shares the record at 21 UFC bouts.  Matt Hughes will also have 21 UFC bouts to his name when he faces Matt Serra this summer, while Liddell’s other old rival – Randy Couture – will fight in the UFC for the twentieth time. With sixteen victories, Liddell already holds the record for most wins in the UFC.

In the main event, the defending middleweight champion Anderson Silva is also looking to break or tie a couple records.  Should he succesfully defend his title against Thales Leites, Silva will become the first fighter in UFC history with nine consecutive wins. He will also tie Matt Hughes and Tito Ortiz with five consecutive title defenses, and tie with Ortiz for the second-most wins in UFC title bouts (Matt Hughes and Randy Couture are tied for the first, with nine title victories each!)

Some additional UFC records:

Most Wins in the UFC

Most Consecutive Wins in the UFC

Most UFC Bouts

Most UFC Title Wins

Most Consecutive UFC Title Defenses

Most UFC Title Bouts

Leland Roling of MMA-Analyst posted some strength of schedule statistics on BloodyElbow.  He went two layers deep, and included the winning percentage of fighters’ opponents, as well as the opponents’ opponents.

Although his efforts were more than noteworthy, after taking a closer look, I felt the combination of the two layers was a bit subjective in nature.  Furthermore, the statistics included the entire careers of all fighters involved, which I felt was overkill.

Update: Posted a Top 50 list.

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We posted the original last June, and you can find the link at the bottom of this post.  Since then, we’ve had more bouts occur, we’ve improved the formulas, and added quite a bit of data,.

The significance of the upsets on this list is measured not by the betting odds, but by the difference in the Fightmatrix.com point standing between the two fighters, normalized by division.  The list is ranked on total difference, not proportional difference, so newer results tend to take precedence, as there is a growing gap between the top notch fighters, and the bottom of the barrel.

1. Gabriel Gonzaga W Mirko Filipovic (UFC 70, Apr 21 2007)
2. Frank Mir W Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira (UFC 92, Dec 27 2008)
3. Matt Serra W Georges St. Pierre (UFC 69, Apr 7 2007)
4. Mark Hunt W Wanderlei Silva (Pride Shockwave 2004, Dec 31 2004)
5. Quinton Jackson W Chuck Liddell 2 (UFC 71, May 26 2007)
6. Mark Coleman W Mauricio Rua (Pride 31, Feb 26 2006)
7. Keith Jardine W Chuck Liddell (UFC 76, Sep 22 2007 )
8. Cheick Kongo W Mirko Filipovic (UFC 75, Sep 8 2007)
9. Junior dos Santos W Fabricio Werdum (UFC 90, Oct 25 2008)
10. Sergey Golyaev W Takanori Gomi (Sengoku 6th, Nov 1 2008)

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