This article is part of our Fight Stat Wrap series.
The UFC returned with their first pay-per-view event of 2017. In the main event, Germaine de Randamie captured the promotion's inaugural women's featherweight title. The following is a by-the-numbers recap that highlights the stats and milestones that stood out on the main card, with stats courtesy of FightMetric.com.
Germaine de Randamie's kickboxing carries her to victory over Holly Holm
Going into this fight, the most obvious storyline was that de Randamie was likely going to be the better straight kickboxer. The question was, did Holm have the more diverse MMA game to take advantage of de Randamie in other areas? Holm made it a fight, but the answer to this question turned out to be a resounding no.
At distance, this was de Randamie's fight. Whenever Holm entered punching range, she ate heavy shots. The Dutch fighter ended up outlanding Holm in terms of significant strikes 80 to 77. Those numbers do not tell the whole story. Of Holm's 77 significant strikes, only 39 of those strikes were not leg kicks. When she did land leg kicks, there was not much power behind them, and they did not influence the fight. Holm appeared to know that she needed to take this fight to the ground, but she just could not do it. She attempted nine takedowns during the 25-minute fight and landed none of them.
Anderson Silva takes controversial decision over Derek Brunson
The total strike differential really jumps off the stat sheet. Brunson landed 118, while Silva only managed to land 54. However, if you look at the significant strike differential, it is much closer, with Burnson still taking the advantage 54 to 43. At the 2012 MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, FightMetric explained the concept of significant strikes.
"Significant strikes includes every strike at distance, figuring that their needs to be a requisite amount of velocity to get you from your hand or your foot to the opponent at distance, and all the power strikes in the clinch and on the ground… Put another way, it includes every strike other than the little tiny ones that happen at short distance."
So, while Brunson did land 64 more total strikes, that differential is not indicative of a one-sided fight. In fact, in terms of significant the second and third rounds of this fight were extremely close. In the second round, Silva outlanded Brunson 10 to 9. In the final round, the fighters both landed 25 significant strikes.
With that being said, Eric Colon's 30-27 scorecard for Silva is a pretty absurd. Of the 23 media scorecards tracked by MMADecision.com, only four went for Silva and none were 30-27.
Ronaldo "Jacare" Souza makes quick work of Tim Boetsch
"Jacare" was the only fighter at UFC 208 who managed to earn a finish. He easily secured the Kimura submission over Boetsch in the first round. Souza has now landed 17 of his 24 MMA victories via submission. Despite being a submission ace, he has recently been relying on his other skills. This was his first submission victory since 2015.
Glover Teixeira does just enough to win against Jared Cannonier
Coming off his first knockout loss in 14 years, Teixeira was conservative to say the least. He employed a ground and pound approach against Cannonier. He landed a takedown in each round and did solid work on top. He landed 113 total strikes in the three-round fight, but only 24 were considered significant. At 1.60 significant strikes landed per minute, this was the second lowest output of Teixeira's UFC/WEC career.
Dustin Poirier turns up the volume against Jim Miller
Poirier came into this fight looking to outwork Miller in the striking game, and it paid off. He attempted 81 more significant strikes than his opponent and ended up outlanding him 97 to 71 in terms of significant strikes. After appearing to injure his leg, Poirier went to his wrestling game and went two for two on takedowns in the final round. Poirier showed off a well rounded game in one of his best performances to date.
