Kimura

Limb — Arm46 Finishes · 2.7% of All Submissions

Total Finishes

Share of All Subs

2.7%

Most by One Fighter

Peak Year

2014

Year by Year

21 Years with a Finish

Statistical overview

The seventh most used submission in the UFC

Every figure below covers complete years only, from 2002 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.

46finishes

2.8%of all 1,644 submissions

#7of 39 distinct submissions

2014peak year, 5 finishes

How’s it trending?

−30%running quiet

Across the last 1,000 men’s fights the kimura finished 4 against 5.8 its earlier rate predicts — 0.40 per 100 fights against 0.57 before. It sits below our threshold for calling a trend shift, though. On 4 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

3.0%of submissions2002–2020

2.2%of submissionslast five years, 2021–2025

The kimura first appears in 2002. 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.

2.2% against 3.0% · 10 of 448 · 95% range −2.5 to 0.9 points

95% range −82% to 92% · 2024-06-28 to 2026-09-19, men’s divisions. Measured as the rate at which the kimura ends a fight, not its share of submissions — share moves whenever the overall submission rate moves.

When does the finish come?

63.0%Round 1

23.9%Round 2

13.0%Round 3

0.0%Round 4

0.0%Round 5

kimura every other submission

63.0% of these finishes come in the first round, against 50.8% for every other submission. That looks like a gap, but on 46 it is well inside what chance alone would produce. Treat the two as the same. Within the round itself the median comes at 2:56 against 2:52 — 4 seconds later.

Does weightclass matter?

Welterweight and middleweight2.5%12 of 488

Featherweight and lightweight2.2%10 of 446

Light heavyweight and heavyweight6.3%15 of 240

Flyweight and bantamweight2.6%6 of 235

Women's divisions1.2%2 of 168

The kimura is at its strongest in light heavyweight and heavyweight, taking 6.3% of the submissions there against 2.2% elsewhere — 4.0 points clear, interval 0.9 to 7.2.

The men’s and women’s divisions

Across the women’s divisions the kimura accounts for 1.2% of submissions — 2 of 168 — against 3.0% everywhere else. That looks like a gap, but on 168 it is well inside what chance alone would produce. Treat the two as the same. 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

One night

2 in a single evening at UFC Fight Night: Vettori vs. Dolidze 2

2025. A card that size predicts 0.1 of them; it produced 2. Nothing links the fights on a card beyond the night they share, so a cluster like this is a coincidence worth seeing rather than a cause worth explaining.

See the card →

One night

2 in a single evening at UFC 123: Rampage vs Machida

2010. A card that size predicts 0.1 of them; it produced 2. Nothing links the fights on a card beyond the night they share, so a cluster like this is a coincidence worth seeing rather than a cause worth explaining.

See the card →

A missing year