MMA Stats and Scoring Glossary
Plain-language definitions of the numbers you see on fight night: how each stat is counted, how judges score a round, and what odds and ranking snapshots mean. Every term links to the live leaderboards, scorecards and boards on UFCalendar where you can see it in use.
Striking
- Significant strike
- A significant strike is a strike a stat-keeper counts as carrying real force: every strike thrown at distance, plus the power strikes thrown in the clinch or on the ground.
- Total strikes
- Total strikes counts every strike a fighter lands or attempts, significant or not, including the short shots in the clinch and on the ground that the significant strike count leaves out.
- Knockdown
- A knockdown is credited when a legal strike makes a fighter lose their footing and touch the canvas with something other than their feet.
- Strike defense
- Strike defense, or significant strike defense, is the share of an opponent's significant strike attempts that do not land: one minus their strikes landed divided by their strikes attempted.
Grappling
- Takedown accuracy
- Takedown accuracy is the share of a fighter's takedown attempts that succeed: takedowns landed divided by takedowns attempted.
- Takedown defense
- Takedown defense is the share of an opponent's takedown attempts a fighter stops: one minus the opponent's takedowns landed divided by their takedowns attempted.
- Control time
- Control time is how long a fighter spends in a dominant position over the opponent: mostly on top or on the back on the ground and, for many stat-keepers, pinning them against the fence in the clinch.
- Submission attempt
- A submission attempt is a choke or joint lock that, in the stat-keeper's judgment, puts the opponent in real danger of having to tap out.
Rates and averages
- Strikes landed per minute
- Strikes landed per minute (SLpM) is a fighter's significant strikes landed divided by the minutes they have spent fighting, so fighters with short and long careers can be compared on one scale.
- Finish rate
- Finish rate is the share of fights won without needing the judges: for a fighter, the percentage of their wins that came by knockout, technical knockout or submission.
Judging and scoring
- 10-Point Must System
- The 10-Point Must System is how MMA judges score a fight: each judge must give the winner of every round 10 points and the loser 9 or fewer.
- 10-8 round
- A 10-8 round is a round a judge scores as a dominant win for one fighter: 10 points for the winner and 8 for the loser, instead of the usual 10-9.
- Unanimous, split and majority decision
- When a fight goes the distance, a unanimous decision means all three judges scored it for the same fighter, a split decision means two judges picked one fighter and the third picked the other, and a majority decision means two picked the same fighter and the third scored it a draw.
- Point deduction
- A point deduction is a penalty the referee imposes for a foul: a point, occasionally two, comes off the fouling fighter's score for that round on all three judges' cards.
Results
- Technical decision and no contest
- When an accidental foul or a clash of heads leaves a fighter unable to continue, the fight is ruled a no contest if it ends early, or goes to the judges' scorecards as a technical decision if enough of it has been fought.
Odds
- Closing line (consensus odds)
- The closing line is the last price on a fight before it starts; UFCalendar's consensus line is the average of the prices across many sportsbooks rather than any single book's.
- Implied probability
- Implied probability is the chance of winning that a price represents: 1 divided by the decimal odds.
Rankings
- Point-in-time rankings (ranking snapshot)
- A point-in-time ranking is the ranking board exactly as it stood on a given date, kept as a snapshot instead of being overwritten when the next update comes out.
- Pound-for-pound
- A pound-for-pound ranking orders fighters from every weight class by how good they are regardless of size, as if they all fought at the same weight.