The Defensive Side Nobody Tracks as Closely
Offense is only half the ledger. The fighters who avoid ever being taken down carry an advantage that is harder to see live but shows up clearly in the data. Julio Arce has stuffed 96.2 percent of takedown attempts against him across his UFC run, the best rate on record, and has only been taken down once in ten UFC fights. Jon Jones, across a run that included multiple light heavyweight title reigns, defended takedowns at a 95 percent clip, a product of the same Greco-Roman wrestling background that also fed his top-position offense. Former bantamweight champion Renan Barao stuffed 92.5 percent of takedowns during his title run.
None of those three built a reputation as a wrestler in the way Dvalishvili or Makhachev did, which is part of the point. Elite takedown defense does not need to be visible to change a fight's outcome; it simply removes an entire tool from the other fighter's kit for 15 or 25 minutes, forcing the fight to happen exactly where the defender wants it.
The pattern is not new. Georges St-Pierre, Daniel Cormier, Kamaru Usman and Henry Cejudo all carried collegiate or Olympic-level wrestling pedigrees into UFC title reigns that lasted years rather than a single defense, and in each case the common thread was the same: opponents could not consistently choose whether the fight happened standing or on the mat. That choice, repeated across dozens of five-minute rounds over a title reign, is worth more cumulatively than any single highlight-reel finish.
