# The knockout goes missing Source: https://fightstats.online/insights/the-knockout-goes-missing Published: 2026-08-21 > Angela Hill has lost sixteen fights in the UFC and has never been knocked out. There are four ways a fight can end, and women are level with the men in three of them. The fourth does not arrive. --- Women's divisions · 2015 onwards · UFC only Angela Hill has lost sixteen fights in the UFC. Nobody has ever knocked her out. There are four ways a fight can end; we tested them one at a time, against men of the same weight. Three came back level. The fourth does not arrive. The question ### Can women finish fights , or are they always destined to go to the judges? The received wisdom Women are naturally smaller and less powerful than the men, so their ability to finish fights is always going to be diminished compared to the men. TLDR; Quick Facts 63.88% 566 of 886 · men 46.80%, 2,255 of 4,818 Women's fights reach the judges far more often than men's. That is the thing everybody has noticed, and it is true. 19.08% 100 of 524 · men 17.90%, 294 of 1,642 But they submit opponents at the same rate as men of the same weight. Interval −2.66 to +5.02 — no difference at all. 7.25% 38 of 524 · men 6.15%, 101 of 1,642 And they stop opponents with ground strikes at the same rate. Interval −1.41 to +3.61. The mat is the same in both sports. 8.40% 44 of 524 · men 17.48%, 287 of 1,642 Here is the one that moves: finished by a clean strike at distance. Less than half the men's rate, interval −12.08 to −6.08. 8.76% — 13.48% women's highest — men's lowest It is every division at once. The highest standing-knockout rate in the women's game sits below the lowest in the men's. The two never overlap. −9.92 pts against −9.08 weight-controlled And it is not size. Adding strawweight, the lightest division in the sport, makes the gap bigger rather than smaller. In short One ending is missing, and only one. Everything that happens on the floor is the same in both sports — the submissions, the ground stoppages, the rate per minute of cage time. What does not come is the clean shot at range, and its absence is the whole of the difference in how often these fights reach a scorecard. Four ways a fight can end ### Women are level with the men, except in one big place A fight can end four ways, and the honest way to ask whether women finish less often is to ask it four times rather than once. Everything below compares women against men at the same weight — flyweight, bantamweight and featherweight, the three divisions the two sports share. 524 women's fights against 1,642 men's, all of them since 2015. Three of the four rows are a dead heat. The fourth is not close, and it is large enough on its own to account for the entire difference in how often these fights reach a scorecard. Each comparison below carries an interval — the range the real difference could plausibly sit in, given how many fights we have. When that range includes zero, the honest reading is that nothing separates the two. #### Finished by ground strikes Women are marginally ahead here. Interval −1.41 to +3.61 — it contains zero, so this is a match, not a lead. #### Won by submission This was the question we set out to answer, and the answer is a null . Interval −2.66 to +5.02. Where those submissions land is a different matter, and a different story. #### Finished by a strike at distance Men are knocked out standing more than twice as often . Interval on the difference −12.08 to −6.08 points — nowhere near zero. #### Knocked out, by any means The total knockout gap is −9.21 points. The strike at distance alone is −9.08 of it. Everything else on that list — the clinch, the ground, the doctor — cancels out. That is the finding, and it is narrower than the headline anyone expects. It is not that women finish less. On the mat the two sports are indistinguishable, twice over: the submission rates match and the ground-strike rates match, and both intervals sit across zero rather than near it. Forty-four of those 524 women’s fights ended with a clean strike at distance — about one in twelve. On the men’s side it is nearer one in six. What does not happen is the clean shot at range — the one that lands on a fighter who is standing free, with nothing holding them up and nothing to fall into. From 115 pounds to 265 ### The men's curve climbs. The women's is flat. Weight is the obvious objection, and the right way to meet it is to look at the whole range rather than argue about the average. In the men's divisions the standing knockout gets steadily more common as the fighters get heavier: from 13.5% of flyweight fights to 26.5% at light heavyweight, a spread of thirteen points. The women's game covers four divisions and thirty pounds, and does not climb at all. It moves 2.4 points end to end, and the highest point on it sits below the lowest point on the men's. Men's divisions, 125 to 265 Women's divisions, 115 to 145 Share of all fights in the division ending by a strike at distance, 2015 onwards Set the three shared divisions against each other one at a time and the gap is in all of them. It is not one division dragging an average around. **Flyweight, strike at distance: women 8.30%, 23 of 277 fights; men 13.48%, 48 of 356 fights. Difference minus 5.18 percentage points, 95% interval minus 9.99 to minus 0.37.** women 8.30% (23 of 277) · men 13.48% (48 of 356) **Bantamweight, strike at distance: women 8.76%, 19 of 217 fights; men 17.48%, 108 of 618 fights. Difference minus 8.72 percentage points, 95% interval minus 13.53 to minus 3.91.** women 8.76% (19 of 217) · men 17.48% (108 of 618) **Featherweight, strike at distance: women 6.67%, 2 of 30 fights; men 19.61%, 131 of 668 fights. Difference minus 12.94 percentage points, 95% interval minus 22.36 to minus 3.52. The women's sample is 30 fights, which is why the interval is wide.** women 6.67% (2 of 30) · men 19.61% (131 of 668) · thirty fights, hence the wide interval Women's featherweight has existed for thirty fights. Two of them ended with a strike at distance, and an interval running from −22.4 to −3.5 points is the honest way to say that we can tell the direction and not much else. Flyweight and bantamweight are the divisions carrying this, and both clear zero on their own. The size objection, and the division that kills it ### The smallest fighters are the least likely to be knocked out Women fight only at the light end of the sport, so anything that varies with weight can impersonate a difference between the sexes. This site has been caught by exactly that before: reach looked like it worked differently for women until it was set against men of comparable size, at which point the difference vanished entirely. So here is the test that could kill this one. Strawweight is the lightest division in the sport and it has no men's equivalent. If the missing knockout is really about size, then adding strawweight — 362 more fights of the smallest fighters there are — should pull the women's rate toward the men's lightest. −9.92 points, with strawweight in - It goes the other way. Every women's division against the men's three lightest is 7.56% versus 17.48% — a gap of 9.92 points, interval −12.45 to −7.39. Restricted to the three shared divisions it is 9.08 points. Adding the smallest fighters in the sport makes the gap bigger, not smaller , because the lightest women are the least likely of anyone to be knocked out standing. It goes the other way. Every women's division against the men's three lightest is 7.56% versus 17.48% — a gap of 9.92 points, interval −12.45 to −7.39. Restricted to the three shared divisions it is 9.08 points. Adding the smallest fighters in the sport makes the gap bigger, not smaller , because the lightest women are the least likely of anyone to be knocked out standing. And the narrowest version of the comparison survives too. Set all 886 women's fights against men's flyweight alone — the single lightest division men have, 356 fights at 13.48% — and the gap is still 5.92 points, interval −9.87 to −1.97. Which leaves the cleanest sentence this data can support: every women's division sits below the men's lightest. The highest standing-knockout rate anywhere in the women's game is bantamweight at 8.76%. The lowest anywhere in the men's is flyweight at 13.48%. The two distributions do not overlap at any point. One caution, and it is the honest limit of this page. The data can say what is missing. It cannot say why. Nothing here measures how often a clean shot lands, how hard it lands, or what happens after it does — only how often a fight ends that way. Any explanation you reach for next is yours, not ours. And it has been that way from the first bell. Las Vegas, April 2013 ### The first one was a knee in the clinch The women's record in the UFC opens on 23 February 2013, when Ronda Rousey takes Liz Carmouche's arm at UFC 157. The first knockout arrives seven weeks later, and it does not arrive at range. UFC Analytics · Archive Edition #### Cat Zingano Lands The First One, And She Has To Hold On To Do It The first knockout in women's UFC history comes from the clinch, with both fighters gripping each other, which is where a great many of them have come from since. Zingano stops Miesha Tate with knees to the head in the clinch — the first time a woman ends a fight by strikes in this promotion, and already not the ending this story is about. The clean shot at distance takes longer to show up: the first one in our modern window is Amanda Nunes over Shayna Baszler on 21 March 2015, and even that is not a punch but kicks to the leg. Thirteen years and 886 fights on, the strike at range remains the rarest way a women's fight finishes. Editor's note: method and position are recorded for every bout back to 1994, so these are genuine firsts rather than first-recorded. The women's game begins at UFC 157; there is nothing before it to have missed. Rate comparisons on this page start in 2015, which clears the ramp-up years when only a handful of women's fights existed. Per fifteen minutes of cage time ### The submission keeps pace. The knockout doesn’t. A share of fights can be moved around by how long fights last. So here is the same question asked of the clock instead: per fifteen minutes of cage time, how often does each ending arrive? **Submissions per 15 minutes of cage time, all divisions, 2015 onwards: women 0.231, men 0.241.** - Women 0.231 - Men 0.241 #### Submissions per 15 minutes - Women 0.231 - Men 0.241 Level. All divisions; restricted to the shared three it is 0.227 against 0.235, which is the same answer again. **Knockouts per 15 minutes of cage time, all divisions, 2015 onwards: women 0.195, men 0.481. Restricted to the shared divisions, women 0.218 and men 0.361.** - Women 0.195 - Men 0.481 #### Knockouts per 15 minutes - Women 0.195 - Men 0.481 Two and a half times as often across all divisions. Weight-controlled it narrows to 0.218 against 0.361 — smaller, and still there. Two fighters spend the same fifteen minutes in the same cage. One of those quarter-hours produces a submission about as often as the other. It produces a knockout less than half as often. One career shows what that looks like laid end to end. The fighter the record elects ### Angela Hill has lost sixteen times and never been knocked out Twenty-nine fights in the UFC — more than any other woman who has never been stopped by strikes. The next longest such career belongs to Valentina Shevchenko, and it is ten fights shorter. She has lost sixteen of the twenty-nine. Ten of those were unanimous decisions and four were split decisions: fourteen times she has stood in the cage at the end of a fight and waited to hear it read out. Twice she has been submitted. Not once has anybody put her away with a punch. She is not an outlier standing against the trend. She is the trend, stretched to a length where it becomes visible: a career of complete fights, decided by three people at a desk, in a division where the other ending mostly does not turn up. **Angela Hill's sixteen UFC losses: ten by unanimous decision, four by split decision, two by submission, none by knockout or TKO.** 14 decisions 2 submissions 0 knockouts — there is no mark for it Men and women · four differences on one axis ### How wrong we could be, drawn to scale This whole page is a comparison of the men's and women's games, so the section that normally sits here has one job left: to be as loud about what did not differ as about what did. Both of these were tested at the same weight, on the same window, and both came back level. Difference in percentage points · women minus men, same weight Won by submission +1.18 No difference Finished by ground strikes +1.10 No difference Knocked out, any means −9.21 Clears zero Finished by a strike at distance −9.08 Clears zero ← women lower women higher → Four differences, one axis. Two bars sit across the line and two do not, and the two that do not are the same finding counted twice — the strike at distance, and the knockout total it very nearly is. Women 524 fights, men 1,642, 2015 onwards. Those two nulls are what make the third figure a finding rather than a headline. If women simply finished less, all three rows would sag together. They don't. Two are level and one is halved, which is a much more specific claim about a much more specific thing. The Training Room What this means for your training ### Plan for the scorecards Sixty-four per cent of women's fights are decided by three people at a desk. That is not a failure to prepare for; it is the base case, and preparing for it is a different job from preparing for a fight you expect to end. #### Train the fifteenth minute, not the first In a division where the standing knockout ends fewer than one fight in eleven, the round you are most likely to be judged on is the one you are most tired in. Conditioning is not insurance here. It is the primary weapon. #### The mat is where the finish actually lives Submissions and ground stoppages happen at the same rate as in the men's game — a combined 26.3% of fights. If you want to end one, the evidence says the floor is where it ends, and that is where the finishing work should go. #### Score the round you are in A fighter waiting for one shot to change a fight is waiting on the least likely outcome available. Volume, position and control decide 63.9% of these fights. Bank the round; do not gamble it. And the same in reverse for anyone matching these fights or reading a card: a women's bout at 115, 125 or 135 that is level after two rounds is far likelier to be settled on paper than in the cage. The knockout is not late in these divisions. It mostly does not come. --- ## Data Structured claims: https://fightstats.online/insights/the-knockout-goes-missing/data/findings.json Underlying query results: - https://fightstats.online/insights/the-knockout-goes-missing/data/frozen.json --- Analysis and prose licensed CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Underlying fight records sourced from ufcstats.com. Method: /data.