Methodology

Sources & authority

• • Established public MMA records are the canonical source — the broadest documentation of pro MMA across 6,000+ promotions worldwide.
• • Event-page facts beat fighter-history. When an event record and a fighter's history disagree on a bout, the event record wins.
• • An independent second source corroborates the majors. For UFC and PFL we cross-check results against a second source; disagreements are logged for review, never silently overwritten. Secondary sources also fill fields the primary record doesn't carry (reach, stance).
• • We never treat news or play-by-play pages as canonical sources.

What counts toward a record

A fighter's headline record is their professional MMA record only. We separate every bout into three scopes and never mix them:

• • Professional — counts toward the record, ranking and stats.
• • Amateur — shown in its own section; excluded from the pro record.
• • Exhibition / cross-discipline — e.g. a boxing match; shown separately, never in the pro MMA record.

Fighter identity

Fighters are keyed by stable source IDs, not names. Names are ambiguous — multiple fighters share one, and fighters change ring names — so we link records by the source's permanent identifier and store name variants as aliases. This prevents distinct people from being merged.

Results, methods & rankings

• • Finishes are classified as KO/TKO, submission, decision, or other (DQ / no-contest), from the event result.
• • The global ranking is a career Elo rating computed chronologically over every professional bout (finishes weighted above decisions), with a minimum-fights eligibility gate. It is a comparative rating, not a prediction.
• • Figures are factual records, not opinion or betting advice.

Leaderboard scope

Career-total leaderboards (most wins, KOs, submissions, fights) default to major promotions only. Raw counts across all promotions are padded by high-volume regional and unsanctioned circuits, which produces records that don't reflect elite competition. Scoping to major promotions keeps the comparison like-for-like; the full all-promotions view is always one click away.

"Major promotions" is a curated editorial set — UFC, Pride, Bellator, ONE, PFL, Rizin, Strikeforce, WEC, Dream, Sengoku, Affliction, EliteXC, IFL, Invicta, Cage Warriors, KSW, ACA, M-1, Oktagon, Pancrase, Shooto and Rings — chosen for historical significance, not event volume. It is deliberately separate from our internal scraping priorities.

Freshness

Major promotions (UFC, PFL) are checked daily; other active promotions on a recency-based cadence (more active = checked more often). Each page reflects the most recent import.

Known limitations

We publish what we can defend and are open about gaps. Biographical fields (date of birth, height, reach, nationality) are sparse for the long tail of regional fighters and improve continuously. A small number of historical bouts carry imprecise timing data. Where a metric can't be supported cleanly across all eras, we scope it rather than publish a claim we can't stand behind.