Khamzat Chimaev took the UFC middleweight title from Dricus du Plessis at UFC 319 with a performance so effortlessly dominant that simply calling it a victory via unanimous decision doesn’t quite say it.
Even looking at the judges’ scorecards fails to capture how lopsided the fight was. All three judges had it 50-44 in favor of the new champ Chimaev, but all three also awarded him a 10-8 score only in the third round, when he could have arguably notched that score in almost any round of the fight.
To really see what was going on in this fight, you might need to look at some of the other numbers to come out of the UFC 319 main event.
131-3: That’s the strike tally for both fighters at the end of the first round. Chimaev landed 131 of the 137 strikes he threw in the opening frame, for an eye-opening 95.6% accuracy rate. Du Plessis landed exactly three. Then again, he is credited with having attempted only three, so at least he connected with 100% of them.
But what’s also telling is the significant strike totals from that round. Of Chimaev’s 137 strikes attempts, only two were classified as significant strike attempts according to the official stats. That’s because most of the round saw Chimaev on top, flattening du Plessis out in a crucifix position while peppering his head with short punches that seemed more aggravating than damaging. Du Plessis was credited with zero significant strike attempts in the opening round.
21:40: That’s Chimaev’s total control time in the fight. At the risk of tremendous understatement, that’s an uncommon figure in a 25-minute fight. Du Plessis is listed as having been in control for a total of just 53 seconds, and all of that came in the final round. Du Plessis is not credited with a single second of control time throughout the first four rounds of the fight. Of course, Chimaev’s control time dropped significantly in that final frame. He controlled well over four of the five minutes in every round except the fifth.
12: That’s the total number of takedowns logged by Chimaev on 17 total attempts. What’s really telling is that DDP didn’t successfully stop a single takedown until Round 4. In that third frame, the one the judges all had as the lone 10-8 round, Chimaev went 3-for-3 on takedowns. By the fifth — by far DDP’s best round by every metric — that figure had dropped to 3 for 6.
567: That’s the total number of strikes Chimaev threw in the fight, giving him an average of 113.4 strikes per round. But of those, just 8.2% were listed as significant strike attempts. This might help explain some of the blowback Chimaev has received from fans and fellow fighters in the wake of such a dominant victory. While all the numbers show that he steamrolled du Plessis in every facet of the fight, he never seemed to go all out in search of a finish.
1: That’s the number of submission attempts in the fight, at least according to the statisticians. And it’s not Chimaev who was given credit for attempting that submission, even though he did briefly threaten with a choke at one point. Instead it’s du Plessis who logged it with his rear-naked choke attempt in the final minute of the fight. Chimaev fought it off, but here again is another indicator of why some might view Chimaev as insufficiently interested in finishing the fight. He controlled the majority of every round, outstruck du Plessis 529-45, but never committed to a submission attempt (at least in the eyes of the record-keepers.)
1: That’s the total number of leg kicks landed by du Plessis. By contrast, he landed 52 leg kicks in his last fight against Sean Strickland. The fight before that, against Israel Adesanya, he landed 22 of 29 leg kick attempts. His previous low in the UFC was eight leg kicks against Derek Brunson, a fighter he knocked out in two rounds. Here, he didn’t even attempt a leg kick until the final round. That’s a pretty good indicator of how Chimaev’s wrestling-heavy game forced DDP to change his usual approach — and without success.
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