Photo Courtesy Dave Mandel, Invicta FC
This year, I decided to dig a bit deeper.
After many questions about the strength of the women’s divisions by fans and MMA pundits, I tabulated debuts after a year absence, as well as added amateur results, which will be expanded upon in part 2 of this three part series.
The third part will dive deeper in each divisions to give you a glimpse of the current health and the future.
I usually just give numbers, but this time around, I will give you more insight into the numbers, as we have been doing these stats for most of the time the site has existed.
For now – a bit of a disclaimer. I compile results every week, but as much as I research, a few fights due fall through the cracks. This is a little more true when it comes to amateurs with several promotions not reporting their results to databases or having media there to even record them. A few times this gets corrected weeks or even months later. This is only a small percentage, and the stats I have are a good approximation of the divisions as a whole.
I encourage athletes, managers, coaches, teammates, and fans to look at my lists and please let me know if there is a fight missing or a result is wrong. Contact us on Facebook, instagram or twitter @WombatSports to make sure I get the information. This is not only important for stats, but I keep an eye out for surging talent and will make mention if I see someone on the rise to matchmakers and promoters.
Archived 2018 results can be found here.
Current month results and upcoming fights can be found here.
We start 2018 in the pro ranks with a slightly higher number of fights than our pace last year. We stand on 343 bouts up to June 30th – four fights more than this time last year. Growth has slowed these past few years, but trends have been the last half of the year outpaces the first six months.
One trend I have been particularly fond of has been the race between armbars and rear naked chokes. In the past years, it was armbars dominating over rear naked chokes, but the RNC has been creeping up fast. For the first time. rear naked chokes are leading with 36 finishes, while armbars accounted for 33 of the submission victories. In total there were 92 submission wins in the first half of 2018, with triangle chokes (7) bypassing guillotines (4) for the third spot.
It should be noted rear naked chokes, then guillotines are the most popular ways to win the men’s divisions.
There were a total of 184 finishes for the first half of the year, roughly 54% of total fights. What has been somewhat muddled is the definition of a pure knockout versus a TKO. The relative definition is a competitor is incapacitated for a knockout versus a TKO, where the referee seeing an athlete in a compromising position he/she is incapable of getting out of and stopping a fight. Wile we are reporting 7 pure knockouts versus 85 TKOs, reporting of one or the other is sketchy at best. Submissions again out passed ending a fight via strikes in terms of finishes, but the numbers were closer than this time last year.
One stat that never seems to change is the time of finishes. Round 1 (113) is still the most popular time to win a fight, followed by round 2 (42), then round 3 (27). There were a two title fights that were finished in the championship rounds. Jingnan Xiong defeated Tiffany Teo at OneFC in round 4, and Amanda Nunes defeated Raquel Pennington in round 5 in the UFC.
As talent evolves, we will see more decisions, and the stats show that. There were 120 unanimous decision wins, which beat this time last year by 22. Split decisions saw no change with 23. Draws more than doubled since last year with 7 draws so far in 2018. There was 1 majority decision and two disqualifications.
Due to Invicta staying in their home base in Kansas City for a few cards, Missouri is the most popular state for a female pro bout with 23. California (10) came in second. The United State overall held 123 pro bouts, most by any country and accounting for 36% of the total matches.
Brazil (43) and Japan (27) retain their number 2 and 3 spots respectively, with China (10) dropping from a tie in third in 2017 to fifth. The country making a comeback to the top 5 has been Russia, with 24 bouts held in the country and taking the fourth spot. 56 countries held female bouts in the first half of the year, the most in any year.
South America is close to being the second continent to have held female fights in all of their countries. Only Guyana and Suriname have yet to hold bouts overall. (French Guiana has yet to hold fights as well, but is considered a territory).
In part 2, we will explore the amateur stats so far in 2018.
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