Before UFC 330 in Philadelphia, the argument was about inches.
Ian Machado Garry barely looked bigger than Islam Makhachev at their first face-off and clearly taller at the second. Fans argued about his shoes. Machado Garry had accused Makhachev of wearing "high heels" earlier in the week, Bloody Elbow reported.
Neil Magny, who lost to Machado Garry in 2023, thought the challenger's frame could matter. "The reach advantage, how well Ian fights from the outside, his ability to get back to his feet, his submission defense, everything that Makhachev does well and is able to exploit in other fighters, I think Ian actually has the answers going into the fight," Magny told MMA Junkie.
Machado Garry had 4 inches of reach on the champion, according to the UFC's official statistics. It did not decide the fight. Makhachev dropped him with a head kick in the second round and won a unanimous decision, MMA Fighting reported.
The reach did show up. When Machado Garry got back to his feet in the middle rounds, he "tried to maintain his reach advantage" with kicks, and "Makhachev was suddenly operating on his backfoot," MMA Fighting reported. But Makhachev kept finding takedowns, and the inches never turned into rounds on the cards.
That is what usually happens. Reach is the UFC's favorite line on the tale of the tape, and for most matchups it means almost nothing.
Small gaps, no effect
Reach is the distance from fingertip to fingertip with the arms spread wide. The UFC measures it and prints it on every tale of the tape, and commentators return to it all night.
We looked at every UFC fight since 2010 in which both fighters had a reach on record and the numbers differed.
When the gap was less than 6 inches, the fighter with the longer arms won barely more than half the time. That is close to a coin flip.
The betting market was not fooled either. In fights with prices, the longer-armed fighter in that range won almost exactly as often as the odds said he would.
Machado Garry's 4 inches sat right in that zone. So does most of what fans argue about during fight week.
Six inches changes the picture
Push the gap to 6 inches or more and the picture changes.
In those fights, the longer fighter won 59% of the time.
He also won more often than his price suggested. The odds already gave the longer fighter a little better than an even chance, but the results came in about 5 points higher than that.
Magny himself showed the other end of the scale on the same card. Earlier that night he faced Ramiz Brahimaj with 8 inches more reach, according to UFC statistics. Brahimaj took the first round with his wrestling, MMA Fighting reported, before Magny pressed him against the fence in the second and finished him with punches.
MMA Junkie called it an upset. The longer fighter was not the favorite, and he won anyway.
Jack Jenkins faced that kind of gap in Shanghai in August. He gave up 10 inches of reach to Sean Woodson and knew it.
"I had to fly in a guy from Perth, from Jack Della (Maddalena)'s gym, to help me prepare just because I didn't have anyone that tall," Jenkins told UFC.com before the fight. A moment later he added: "I actually ran into Sean in the buffet at breakfast this morning, and yeah, he's a tall guy — definitely a big fella — but we both gotta weigh the same to get in there and then come Saturday night, we're both gonna be trying to take each other's heads off, and I can reach that, I promise you."
He could not quite reach it. Woodson won a split decision.
Why only the extremes?
Results alone cannot say why big gaps matter and small ones do not. One reading is that a few inches can be closed with footwork and timing, while a gap the size of Woodson's means one fighter can hit from a distance where the other cannot touch him.
The pattern is not a fluke of one era. It shows up from 2010 through 2017 and again from 2018 on, and outside the heavyweight and light heavyweight divisions, where many of the biggest gaps come.
It could still be smaller than it looks. We split the gaps into four ranges, and only the widest one stood out. When you look in four places, one of them can look special by chance.
We also left out every fight in which one fighter's reach was missing. The UFC's records tend to hold measurements for fighters who stay on the roster, so a missing reach is partly a sign of a short career. Counting those fights would have made reach look far more powerful than it is.
What to watch
The next time a broadcast flashes a reach advantage of 2 or 3 inches, treat it as trivia. Across thousands of fights, gaps that size have not mattered.
When the gap reaches half a foot, pay attention. It is one of the few numbers on the tale of the tape with a record of moving results, and the betting prices have not always kept up.
And watch how the shorter fighter handles it. Jenkins prepared with a sparring partner flown in from Perth. Against a gap that size, closing the distance is the whole fight.
Fight week will keep arguing about inches. The record says to save the argument for the big ones.
How we did this
- Results: UFC official statistics, every decided UFC fight from Jan. 1, 2010 through Oct. 10, 2026 (7,531 fights with a winner). Draws and no contests are left out.
- Reach: the official UFC reach for each fighter from UFC statistics, joined by name; 18 fighter rows that share a name with another fighter were dropped. Fights where both fighters had a reach on record: 93.7%. We used 6,141 fights where both reaches were known and different; 914 fights with equal reach were left out.
- Win rate of the longer fighter, by gap: under 2 inches, 50.5% (n=1,697); 2 to 3.5 inches, 50.4% (n=2,538); 4 to 5.5 inches, 52.7% (n=1,241); 6 inches or more, 59.2% (n=665).
- Against the odds: closing betting prices with the bookmaker's margin removed, available for 5,917 of the 6,141 fights. Longer fighter's actual win rate vs. the price: under 2 inches, 50.8% vs. 49.9%; 2 to 3.5 inches, 50.2% vs. 51.0%; 4 to 5.5 inches, 53.1% vs. 52.5%; 6 inches or more, 59.3% vs. 54.3% (n=644; 95% interval for the difference 1.6 to 8.4 points). Across all gaps the difference was 0.6 points (interval -0.5 to 1.8).
- Stability: 6 inches or more, 2010-2017: 58.4% won vs. 55.1% priced (n=250); 2018-2026: 59.9% vs. 53.8% (n=394). Outside heavyweight and light heavyweight: 57.9% vs. 54.0% (n=477).
- Missing reach: in the 462 fights where exactly one fighter had a reach on record, that fighter won 88.7%. Those fights are excluded.
- Named fights: Makhachev 70 inches, Machado Garry 74, UFC 330, Aug. 15, 2026. Magny 80 inches, Brahimaj 72, same card, Magny by TKO at 3:20 of round 2. Jenkins 68 inches, Woodson 78, UFC Shanghai, Aug. 29, 2026.
- Limits: reach is measured once and recorded as a single number. It does not capture height, stance or how a fighter uses his range. Four gap ranges were tested; the widest is the only one that stands out, so its size may be overstated.