Who has the most submission wins in MMA history?

Across major MMA promotions, Masakatsu Funaki has the most submission wins, with 35.

Scope: major promotions only (UFC, Pride, Bellator, ONE, PFL, Rizin, Strikeforce, WEC, Cage Warriors, KSW, ACA, Pancrase, Shooto and more). This excludes the regional and unsanctioned bouts that inflate raw career totals — switch to all promotions for those.

# Fighter submission wins

Masakatsu Funaki 35 2

Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira 19 7 Manabu Yamada 19 8

Satoru Kitaoka 18 9

Charles Oliveira 17 10

Alexey Oleynik 16 11

Yuki Kondo 16 12

Kleber Koike Erbst 15 13 Ryushi Yanagisawa 15 14

Fedor Emelianenko 15 15 Takafumi Ito 14 16 Rumina Sato 14 17

Bas Rutten 14 18

Frank Shamrock 14 19

Josh Barnett 14 20 Noboru Asahi 14 21

Kazushi Sakuraba 14 22

Jim Miller 14 23

Jason DeLucia 13 24

Urijah Faber 13 25 Osami Shibuya 13 26

Ali Bagov 12 27

Andrei Semenov 12 28 Mikhail Ilyukhin 12 29

Mamed Khalidov 12 30

Shohei Nose 11 31

Gegard Mousasi 11 32

Alikhan Suleymanov 11 33

Ryo Asami 11 34

Renato Sobral 11 35

Gerald Meerschaert 11 36

Chris Haseman 11 42 Takaku Fuke 11 43

Kazuo Takahashi 11 44

Kazumasa Majima 11 45 Kazuhiro Sakamoto 11 46

Chris Lytle 11 47

Royce Gracie 11 48

Nate Diaz 11 49 Kiuma Kunioku 11 50

Rani Yahya 11

FAQ

Who has the most submission wins in MMA history?

Across major MMA promotions, Masakatsu Funaki has the most submission wins, with 35. The full leaderboard of the top 50 is below.

How is this ranking measured?

Professional MMA fighters ranked by career wins by submission.

Why are these totals lower than other sites?

By default we count only bouts in major promotions, so volume records padded by regional or unsanctioned shows don't distort the leaderboard. The all-promotions view includes every promotion on record.

Who are the top 3 for submission wins?

The top three are Masakatsu Funaki (35 submission wins), Shinya Aoki (25 submission wins), Ikuhisa Minowa (24 submission wins).