What is strike defense in MMA?
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.
How it works
Total the significant strikes opponents attempted against a fighter and the ones that landed. Strike defense = (attempted − landed) ÷ attempted × 100. A strike that is slipped, blocked, parried or simply misses counts as defended, because only clean contact counts as landed.
Its mirror is strikes absorbed per minute: significant strikes landed by opponents divided by minutes fought. A fighter can have good strike defense and still absorb a lot if they spend long fights in the pocket.
Worked example
Opponents throw 300 significant strikes at a fighter and land 117. The fighter's strike defense is (300 − 117) ÷ 300 = 61%.
Good to know
Some sources compute striking defense over total strikes rather than significant strikes, which gives a different number for the same fighter. On UFCalendar it is always significant strikes, and a career rate is only ranked once opponents have attempted at least 50 of them.
Where to see it on UFCalendar
Get it from the API
The same data is served as JSON by the MMA Fight Data API. The endpoints that carry it:
GET /v1/fighters/{idOrSlug}/statsCareer statistics per scope: strike and takedown rates, accuracy, defense, submission average.
GET /v1/stats/leadersOne Record Book leaderboard per promotion: career, single-fight, round, division and event boards across 48 metrics.
UFC fight stats in the Fight API →