Guillotine Choke

Neck303 Finishes · 17.7% of All Submissions

Total Finishes

303

Share of All Subs

18%

Most by One Fighter

Peak Year

2015

Year by Year

32 Years with a Finish

Statistical overview

The second most used submission in the UFC

Every figure below covers complete years only, from 1994 through 2025. The current year is left out until it is finished, because a part-season is both a smaller sample and a lopsided one — this section rewrites itself each January.

291finishes

17.7%of all 1,644 submissions

#2of 39 distinct submissions

2015peak year, 23 finishes

How’s it trending?

−2%running quiet

Across the last 1,000 men’s fights the guillotine choke finished 36 against 36.7 its earlier rate predicts — 3.60 per 100 fights against 3.67 before. It sits below our threshold for calling a trend shift, though. On 36 finishes in a window this size, a run like this turns up often enough by chance that we will not call the underlying rate changed — a genuine move and a good spell look the same until more fights land. Worth watching rather than worth re-planning a camp around.

And over the long run

18.3%of submissions1994–2020

16.1%of submissionslast five years, 2021–2025

The guillotine choke first appears in 1994. That looks like a gap, but on 448 it is well inside what chance alone would produce. Treat the two as the same. Over five years it is holding roughly the share it always had.

That looks like a gap, but on 448 it is well inside what chance alone would produce. Treat the two as the same.

16.1% against 18.3% · 72 of 448 · 95% range −6.3 to 1.8 points

95% range −33% to 40% · 2024-06-28 to 2026-09-19, men’s divisions. Measured as the rate at which the guillotine choke ends a fight, not its share of submissions — share moves whenever the overall submission rate moves.

When does the finish come?

54.0%Round 1

30.9%Round 2

14.4%Round 3

0.7%Round 4

0.0%Round 5

guillotine choke every other submission

54.0% of these finishes come in the first round, against 50.5% for every other submission. That looks like a gap, but on 291 it is well inside what chance alone would produce. Treat the two as the same. Within the round itself the median comes at 2:24 against 2:57 — 33 seconds earlier.

Does weightclass matter?

Welterweight and middleweight20.3%99 of 488

Featherweight and lightweight19.5%87 of 446

Light heavyweight and heavyweight15.0%36 of 240

Flyweight and bantamweight20.4%48 of 235

Women's divisions7.1%12 of 168

The guillotine choke is at its weakest in women's divisions at 7.1%, 11.8 points below the rest of the sport, interval −16.1 to −7.4.

The men’s and women’s divisions

Across the women’s divisions the guillotine choke accounts for 7.1% of submissions — 12 of 168 — against 18.9% everywhere else. That is a real difference — 11.8 points less of the women's game, and big enough that chance does not explain it. That said, the women’s sample is 168 submissions in total, so it moves on a handful of fights in a way the men’s does not.

Anything out of the ordinary

Nothing stands out. No year, card or fighter sits outside what the guillotine choke’s own volume predicts — it arrives at a steady rate, spread across the roster, rather than in bursts belonging to one night or one person.