The 9-Year Rule: A look at career lengths in Mixed Martial Arts
By Zach Arnold | June 19, 2011
fightopinion.com
Article written by David Williams
Mixed martial arts is a very young sport. While the history of the UFC dates back to 1993, established mainstream sports such as baseball and football have existed since the 19th century. Over time, those sports have evolved: the way they’re played today looks very little like the way they were played in the early years of their existence. Part of the evolution of these sports is the development of a mostly set career path. In baseball, for example, an average MLB player can expect to reach the major leagues between the ages of 23 and 25, reach his prime between ages 27 and 31, and decline afterwards, with most players retired or out of the sport by the time they reach their late-30s. Running backs in football are notorious for having short careers: most of them suffer a career collapse sometime around the age of 30.
For MMA, there doesn’t seem to be a specific age range in which fighters enter their prime or suffer a decline. Great fighters such as Wanderlei Silva and Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira are 34 and 35 years old, respectively, and both appear to be on the last legs of their careers. Randy Couture, on the other hand, didn’t even begin his career until he was 34 years old. A remarkable fact about recent high-profile MMA collapses is that there’s little consistency about what age they occur. While Chuck Liddell’s collapse took place in his late-30s, fighters like Joe Stevenson and Karo Parisyan aren’t even 30 years old yet.
Despite this inconsistency, I’m going to argue that MMA fighters, like baseball and football players, have consistent career paths. I believe that there’s a particular point at which most fighters enter the prime of their career, and a point at which most fighters exit their prime, and either decline or suffer a brutal career collapse. This is based not on the age of the fighter, or even how many times the fighter has competed professionally, but instead on how long a fighter has been competing professionally.
To determine exactly when it is that fighters collapse, I need an objective method to measure how well fighters perform over time. Fortunately, I have a great tool to use to do this with SILVA, my statistical analysis system that estimates how good MMA fighters are. SILVA does this objectively by only looking at the wins and losses of a fighter and his opponents. It takes each of the opponents on a fighter’s record, and assigns each fight a “Victory Score” based on how good the opponent is. This “Victory Score” is what I’ll use to measure the performance of fighters over time.
For this study, I want to look at the collective performance of fighters over time against only the top tier of opponents, or what I define as a “UFC-quality fighter.” The reason I do this is to filter out wins against inferior opponents: if a fighter is in the midst of a collapse, nobody is going to be convinced otherwise by a win against a 4-10 opponent on the regional circuit. With the parameters of the study set, I evaluated the careers of over 300 fighters, most of whom have competed in the UFC, to determine how well they perform according to how long they’ve been competing professionally. Here are the results:
Fighters’ Winning Percentage Against Quality Opponents
* Year 1: 41.6%
* Year 2: 51.9%
* Year 3: 58.8%
* Year 4: 64.0%
* Year 5: 54.4%
* Year 6: 52.8%
* Year 7: 62.1%
* Year 8: 56.4%
* Year 9: 57.6%
* Year 10: 47.3%
* Year 11: 52.1%
* Year 12: 46.7%
* Year 13: 40.0%
The steepest drop takes place after the fighters measured had been competing professionally for 9 years. At that point, the ability of the fighters to compete against quality competition declines to the same level as when they were relative rookies in the sport. It doesn’t mean that the fighters are incapable of winning against good opponents, but their ability to compete at the highest levels of the sport is greatly diminished. This can take root in various ways. Some fighters become much more prone to being knocked out. Some have a slower reaction time. Others start getting injured on a frequent basis. For some, the collapse is psychological: the fighter becomes mentally broken.
Recent high-profile collapses appear to bolster the case of the “9-year rule.” Here are a few examples:
CHUCK LIDDELL: MMA debut – 5/18/98, 9-year mark – 5/18/07
Liddell’s first fight after reaching the 9-year mark was his sudden first-round KO loss to Quinton “Rampage” Jackson. After that, Liddell’s only win was against an “older” (by MMA years) fighter in Wanderlei Silva, and he was knocked out in brutal fashion by Rashad Evans, Mauricio “Shogun” Rua, and Rich Franklin.
FEDOR EMELIANENKO: MMA debut – 5/21/00, 9-year mark – 5/21/09
Emelianenko’s first fight after nine years was the Strikeforce match against Brett Rogers, in which Emelianenko was put in more danger than usual. After that, Emelianenko, whose only previous loss was a doctor stoppage due to a cut against Tsuyoshi Kosaka, shockingly lost two fights in a row, to Fabricio Werdum and Antonio “Bigfoot” Silva.
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