IT’S TIME!!! EDA of UFC events and weightclasses.
Mix martial arts have evolved from a niche sport to a world wide phenomenon in recent decades and the biggest mma promotion company, Ultimate Fighting Championship, has been a leader in the industry since early 2000s. Today you might not be mma fan but the chances are you’ve heard of UFC (hell, for many people UFC and mma are synonyms!) and some of its biggest stars like Conor McGregor, Khabib Nurmagomedov, Jon Jones or Georges St-Pierre.
In this article I’ll try to answer three simple questions:
- Did global pandemic influenced the number of events UFC had in 2020?
- What are the most common destinations for UFC events and has they changed in 2020?
- What is the most entertaining weightclass in UFC to watch?
All the data used in the article was gathered from ufcstats.com and can be found in my GitHub repository.
To answer the first question, let’s see how many events UFC held every year since UFC 2 in 1994.
As we can see, UFC had been having less than 10 events per year before 2005. Since then the numbers were increasing reaching its peak of 46 events in 2014. It’s not a coincidence that numbers went up after 2005. UFC launched a reality show The Ultimate fighter on Spike TV in 2005 which was a huge success. That led to growing popularity of UFC and mma in general. For the last six years UFC make around 40 events per year and 2020 is not an exclusion. 41 event by the end of this year! So we can certainly say that global pandemic didn’t effect the number of UFC events. If anything their PPV numbers probably increased due to major sports lockdowns (but PPV information isn’t disclosed so I couldn’t check it).
Next is to define the most common destionations for UFC events and if global pandemic effected that somehow. Let’s have a look at top 10 destinations for events in UFC history and top 10 destinations in 2020.
So, Las Vegas is way far ahead in hosting UFC events. 144 (145 by the end of 2020) events in UFC history happened in Sin City. Abu Dhabi, UAE, comes second with only 12 events. But unlike Las Vegas that has a huge lead, Abu Dhabi got into top 10 only this year because of 9 UFC events placed there in 2020. I guess, other than Las Vegas, global pandemic did effect what places UFC choose for their events.
Lastly, many casual fans believe that fights are more exciting if they don’t go the distance and stopped by KO or submission. I personally don’t think it’s 100% true (many fights that go to judges decision are very-very entertaining). But, just to toy with the idea, let’s check what weightclass has most stoppages in UFC history.
Now, in the graph we see that welterweights and lightweights have most finishes in the UFC (549 and 546 respectively). I think it’s a bit misleading because there might simply be more fights in those weight classes. To fix that let’s see what percentage of the fights in each weightclass didn’t go the distance(I also got rid of super heavyweight, open weight and catch weight classes as they don’t have them anymore in UFC).
Now we can see that almost 70% of heavyweight fights end with a KO or submission. Curiously, it’s clear that in both male and female weighclasses the heavier the fighters are, the more likely the fight to be stopped early.
In conclusion, I want to add that I, as a big fan of the sport, am very happy that UFC did not stop making fighting events in 2020 despite the global pandemic. And I’d like to encourage you to watch the fights. Whether in heavy- or strawweight classes, it is a pure competition to determine the best!
Any feedback is most welcome!
