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Feature · 11 Oct 2026

UFC knockouts have surged since July. The easy explanations don't fit

King Green asked to go out on his shield. He was one of 11 knockouts at UFC 332, part of a run that neither the finish bonus nor the mismatch critics can fully explain.
By · feature, data, knockouts

King Green says he asked referee Herb Dean for one thing before he stepped into the cage at UFC 332 in Salt Lake City: let him go out on his shield.

"I told Herb, this is going to get sticky," Green said in an Instagram video after the fight, as MMA Fighting reported. "Let me go out on my shield." Bloody Elbow reported that Green said the conversation took place before the bout.

Esteban Ribovics dropped him several times in the first round, and Dean waved it off. "I was still fine," Green said. "I wanted to keep fighting."

His loss was one of 11 knockouts that night, the most on any UFC card in our records.

Johnny Walker, in his first fight at heavyweight, sent Mick Parkin to the canvas with a knee. Damian Pinas ended his fight with an uppercut along the fence. UFC CEO Dana White said picking the bonus winners was tricky. "What we kept saying all night after the prelims, we were like, 'Jesus Christ, how are we gonna?'" he said, according to UFC.com.

A week later in Las Vegas, Andre Fili froze Kai Kamaka III with a head kick, what UFC.com called "perhaps the finest finish of his lengthy Octagon career." More than half the fights on that card ended in knockouts.

Fili, who said he comes from "violence and drug abuse and poverty," talked afterward about what winning now pays for. "And now I'm making enough money to where I can change the trajectory of my entire family," he said, as MMA Fighting reported.

A summer of knockouts

Since July 1, nearly half of all UFC fights have ended in a knockout.

That is not how this sport usually works. From 2018 through 2025, about 31% of UFC fights ended in knockouts, and no single year strayed far from that. The first half of this year looked the same.

The change belongs almost entirely to knockouts. Submissions have not moved. The fights that used to go to the judges are ending on the feet instead.

Everyone blames the money

The first explanation many reach for is the bonus. In January, at the start of its Paramount+ deal, the UFC began paying an extra $25,000 to any fighter who wins by knockout or submission without taking one of the night's big awards, MMA Junkie reported, crediting Sports Business Journal.

Fighters notice. Shanelle Dyer said she was thinking about it in her corner before the final round of her win in Sacramento in August. "I want that. I need that," Dyer said, as MMA Junkie reported. "I would've been disappointed if I didn't finish her."

For some, the check is more than a bonus. Muhammad Saidov earned one with a TKO of Dustin Jacoby in his UFC debut in Abu Dhabi in July. "A month ago, I was sitting at home and I didn't know where to get the money to feed my family," he said, according to MMA Junkie.

But the timing does not fit. The finish bonus arrived about five months before the knockouts did.

Through the spring, the knockout rate stayed where it had been for years. Two weeks into the new system, MMA Junkie wrote that the promotion "hasn't had to stress too much about those finish bonuses."

White had predicted as much in 2024, after UFC 304. "Upping them doesn't change anything," he said then, according to MMA Junkie, adding that "it doesn't make them fight any harder."

A delayed effect is possible. Fighters sign bouts months ahead, and camps take time to change. But nothing about the bonuses changed in July, and nothing in the results shows fighters taking more risks for the money.

The critics are half right

The other explanation came from the critics, and it came fast. In MMA Fighting's post-event roundtable, one writer summed up the night as "UFC Squash Lake City." Another wrote, "please don't confuse mismatches playing out as expected with actual card quality."

A Sherdog opinion column went further. "It didn't look like a happy accident; it looked like the product of deliberate matchmaking," the columnist wrote.

White had already answered the card's critics on fight night. At the post-fight press conference, he said "not every card is going to be for you," Bloody Elbow reported.

The critics have a point. Betting prices show the UFC has been booking more lopsided fights since July, and UFC 332 was one of the most one-sided cards we have measured.

But mismatches explain only a sliver of the jump. If this summer's fights had been matched the way cards were matched from 2018 through 2025, the knockout rate would barely fall. The closer fights are ending in knockouts too.

UFC 332 shows it. Walker's knockout came in a fight the betting market saw as close to even. Roman Kopylov, the underdog, stopped Ateba Gautier. And the Las Vegas card a week later was the least lopsided of the priced cards since July, yet more than half its fights still ended in knockouts.

What nobody can measure yet

That leaves explanations nobody can prove. Referees could be stepping in sooner. Green's complaint is one public example, and there is no reliable way to measure stoppage timing across hundreds of fights.

The roster has shifted a little, with more debutants and more heavyweights and light heavyweights, where knockouts are always more common. But the knockout rate rose outside those divisions too.

It could also be chance, though luck alone is an unlikely explanation for a run this long. A streak picked out after the fact always looks more remarkable than it is, and runs like this often partly fade. A few months is a short stretch in a sport where one card can swing wildly.

What to watch

The rest of the year will start to settle it. If knockouts keep coming at this summer's pace, something has changed in how UFC fights end. If the rate drifts back toward its old level, the summer was mostly a streak.

Watch the close fights. If bouts the betting market sees as near even keep ending in knockouts, matchmaking is not the story.

And watch how often the judges are needed. Decisions are the one result that has shrunk this summer, and they are the clearest sign of whether fighters are fighting differently or only being matched differently.

The highlight reels will look the same either way. The tell is quieter: how often the scorecards get read.

How we did this

Published by FightIQ on 11 Oct 2026. Claims about fights and records are checked against our own graded card data before publication — the same data behind the public track record. How this was written, checked and published.
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