How long between title fights?

Foolish

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So this is an article I wanted to share, since I notice there has been a lot of talk about how long a champion should be allowed to go without defending their belt, as usually there's a champion who it feels like it has been a year. I decided to look into some statistics as to how long the average wait is between title defenses.

I found an article that actually went through and calculated the average time between fights for every champion, and aside from learning some interesting statistics (I had no idea Bendo was tied for #1 with Sylvia for example).

This is including only fighters who fought 3 or more times as champion, but I went ahead and double checked the numbers and 138 days per defense is actually the shortest time with the exception of Eddie Alvarez's defense aginst Conor at 128, Couture's LHW defense against vitor, which clocked in at 127 days, Holly Holm at 111 days, or Tate at 126, Tanner defending against franklin after 119, and Menne defending against Bustamante after 105 days.

The list does not include cyborg either, who currently sits at 116 days per defense and counting, but I'm hesitant to include her in the calculations since she has had a marked weight advantage in every fight except possibly Holm.

With all that said, the reason I did not include those in the calculation (aside from laziness) is that too many factors factor into 1 and done defenses, and pretty much everyone in that list lost those fights. So far it seems that the fastest a champion can defend the belt consistently, that is more than one defense attempted, sits at 138 days.

I hope you clicked this thread looking for math lol.

Click here if you want to see the chart I used

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So I've taken into account those numbers and I've removed any current champions at the time of that list.

This is also a very old and outdated list, but since I was looking up the averages, I figured it would fit well enough for my numbers. Plus I figured the variations since April of last year would not be sufficient to mess up the figures super badly, and to my knowledge no new champion has defended a belt 3 or more times since then. Stipe Miocic is at 224 if you want to include him.

So based on this completely unscientific method, I found that the average days between title defense for a champion who has fought 3 or more times as champion to be....






204.2 days or so.




To show that there wouldn't be a tremendous deviation, even if I add in Conor's current 492 or so days without a defense, it only brings the number to 217, and he's arguably the most extreme example.

Thank you for reading all of this, Sherdog, and the main point I want to ask is....

Was that number what you expected? Does it seem high? Does it seem low? Is it fair to expect a champion to defend their belt every 204 days on average? Are you impressed by a champion being more active, such as Bendo's 138? I want to hear it!

Article Link for anyone who wants to read the whole thing.

Again, I realize this isn't current, but I wanted to average out the statistics and this was the easiest way to do it without making a chart myself. Flawed Methodology be damned I say!
 
Lies, damn lies and statistics.

I'd strip a champion if he/she doesn't defend within a year at most. Even if they're injured and rehabbing after surgery, the game goes on. Then give them a title shot when they're ready.

I agree completely with stripping Conor, they just waited too long to do so.
 
I expected it to be about that, read the title and said to myself "like 6 months" and yeah im happy with that, and I think its reasonable to ask a champ to fight every 200 days
 
This confirms what we've all been saying. Cain Velasquez and Dominick Cruz = Worst champs ever.

Not counting McGregor, since he's a paper chump anyway.
 
Phew, I know flyweight gets a lot of flack around here, but wow.... props to DJ, seeing the data laid out like that it's pretty damn impressive
 
If I were running an MMA org, champions would have to fight 4 times a year and Twitter beef would get people fired.
 
Phew, I know flyweight gets a lot of flack around here, but wow.... props to DJ, seeing the data laid out like that it's pretty damn impressive

This is how I felt about Ronda and Bendo too lol.

It's kind of an irony that some of the most active fighters are also some of the most criticized.
 
Thumbs up for a post with some actual interesting data!

So 1.7 title defenses per year.
That's OK, I was fearing it would be lower.
That means an average champ for 3 years would defend 5 times.
 
This touches on a topic I've been wanting to discuss. I haven't started a thread since I don't trust most sherdoggers to be smart enough to respond with any cohesion or relevance.
So, I'll just hop on yours.

So, my thoughts are defending titles Vs yearly tournaments crowning a champ from every division.
I could elaborate more but first wanna see what others think.
 
Every six months, or two title defenses per year, is acceptable to me. Maybe even every 7-8 months is fine. Even though fuck Jon Jones, I'm pretty sure he defended it more than that.

The problem is, dumbass McGregor fans that actually say it's ok either never defend the belt, or take two year long breaks while competing in completely different sports, are ruining it for people. He still has fans, the fans are okay with it, actually DEFEND this pathetic stance, and the last thing the UFC needs to do from an ownership / PR standpoint is tell other fighters they have to defend more when they are perfectly fine with McGregor taking a dump on their old, working model. Especially since the one that is ruining for everybody is, ahem, a stereotypical white guy.
 
Cheers for the data.

2 defenses per year, or 182 days, would be ideal to me.

That doesn't seem to far off the 204.2 figure, but 204.2 is the mean. That means, assuming a normal distribution, over 50% of champions are taking too long in-between defenses imo.

I would like to see a complimentary data set prepared with scheduled defenses in addition to actual defenses. There are so many pull-outs due to injury it would be interesting to see how much lower the "scheduled days between defenses" are compared to the 204.2 figure.
 
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