This Saturday Hooker vs Parnasse · Accor Arena Paris France See this week's picks →
Events · UFC 137: Penn vs Diaz · BJ Penn vs Nick Diaz
From the tape · 29 Oct 2011

BJ Penn vs Nick Diaz

UFC 137: Penn vs Diaz · Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
Result

Nick Diaz beat BJ Penn

Method
Decision - Unanimous
Round
3 of 3
Clock
5:00
WelterweightMainReferee · Josh Rosenthal

We published no prediction for this bout. Everything on this page is the official record and the tape it was fought on — the result, the round-by-round counts, the judges’ cards where they exist and the sportsbook line where one was published. Our graded calls start in 2026 and live on the public record.

BP
Red corner BJPenn“The Prodigy”
VSOn the tape
ND
Blue corner NickDiazCesar Gracie Fight Team · Stockton, California
Welterweight3 rounds29 Oct 2011
The story going in
  • Has finished 11 of 12 UFC wins.
  • Comes in on a 2-fight win streak.
  • 20 UFC bouts deep — 10 more than Diaz.
  • Every one of Diaz’s 6 UFC wins came inside the distance.
16-14-2
Record
26-10
32
Age
−4 yr28
5' 9"
Height
+4″6' 1"
70″
Reach
+6″76″
Orthodox
Stance
Southpaw
+1020
UFC bouts
10
11/1292% of wins
Finishes
+8%6/6100% of wins
Vitals, record, nickname and camp come from the public UFC fighter register and are current, not a snapshot of fight night. UFC bouts, finish rate and every storyline line are counted off the official UFC fight record. A tick marks the side holding the raw edge in that row — longer reach, taller, younger, more bouts, a higher finish rate. It is a fact about the tape, not a prediction, and rows with no clean comparison (record, stance, gym, hometown) carry no tick at all. Any row we cannot fill on both sides is left out rather than half-drawn. Streaks, bout counts and finish rates are as they stood going into this fight — this bout and everything after it is excluded from the count.

Round by round

Every round the fight went, shaded by where the significant strikes actually landed — the takedowns, control time and knockdowns beside them, and how the three judges scored that round.

UFCStats · per round

3 rounds of tape

Round 15:00 of action
BJ Penn33 sig landed
HEAD70%23 of 37BODY30%10 of 11LEGS0%0 landed
Nick Diaz20 sig landed
HEAD75%15 of 38BODY20%4 of 9LEGS5%1 of 1
33 of 48
Sig.
strikes
20 of 48
1 of 1
Take-
downs
0 of 0
1:24
Control
1:06
Distance 20Clinch 11Ground 2
Where it
happened
Distance 14Clinch 6Ground 0
Judges · this round · Penn firstAdalaide Byrd10–9Roy Silbert10–9Tony Weeks10–9
Round 25:00 of action
BJ Penn19 sig landed
HEAD100%19 of 42BODY0%0 landedLEGS0%0 landed
Nick Diaz83 sig landed
HEAD73%61 of 119BODY25%21 of 24LEGS1%1 of 1
19 of 42
Sig.
strikes
83 of 144
0 of 1
Take-
downs
0 of 0
0:00
Control
1:45
Distance 18Clinch 1Ground 0
Where it
happened
Distance 69Clinch 14Ground 0
Judges · this round · Penn firstAdalaide Byrd9–10Roy Silbert9–10Tony Weeks8–10
Round 35:00 of actionEnded 5:00
BJ Penn36 sig landed
HEAD94%34 of 70BODY6%2 of 4LEGS0%0 landed
Nick Diaz75 sig landed
HEAD80%60 of 139BODY19%14 of 18LEGS1%1 of 1
36 of 74
Sig.
strikes
75 of 158
0 of 2
Take-
downs
0 of 0
0:01
Control
0:32
Distance 33Clinch 3Ground 0
Where it
happened
Distance 67Clinch 8Ground 0
Judges · this round · Penn firstAdalaide Byrd9–10Roy Silbert9–10Tony Weeks9–10

Significant strikes, takedowns, control time, knockdowns and submission attempts exactly as UFCStats recorded them for this bout, round by round. Zone percentages are that round’s landed head, body and leg counts over their own total — raw arithmetic, nothing modelled or smoothed. A round in which a fighter landed nothing shades empty and reads zero; it is never filled in from the round before.

The cards, totalled

The judges’ final totals, the media’s cards beside them, and how these judges usually score. Their round-by-round 10–9s are with the rounds above.

Official card

Unanimous Decision

Referee · Josh Rosenthal
BJ PennNick Diaz
Official totals — BJ Penn first
JudgeTotal
Adalaide Byrd2.0 avg spread · 45% wide28–29
Roy Silbert2.0 avg spread · 44% wide28–29
Tony Weeks2.1 avg spread · 49% wide27–29

Each judge’s round-by-round scores sit with the round they belong to, in the round-by-round section above — switch a round there and the three cards for it change with the stats.

Media cards — 7 scored, BJ Penn first · unofficial

Mike Whitman Sherdog.com27–29
Chris Nelson Sherdog.com28–29
Freddie DeFreitas Sherdog.com28–29
MM AWeekly.com28–29
MM AJunkie.com28–29
Mike Chiappetta MMAFighting.com28–29
Fight Metric.com28–29

Fan vote · unofficial

29-27 Diaz · 51%29-28 Diaz · 34%30-27 Diaz · 5%29-26 Diaz · 2%30-26 Diaz · 2%

120 fan cards submitted to MMA Decisions.

Official cards come from the UFCStats fight record and MMA Decisions. Media cards and the fan vote are MMA Decisions’ own collection and are not official. Judge tendency figures are that judge’s whole recorded history, not this bout — they are context for how a card was scored, never a claim that it was scored wrongly.

Takedowns

Takedowns

The level change — head to head

Career UFC takedown rates. Red corner left, blue corner right.

BJ Penn

1.19takedowns / 15 min
1.19 / 15m
TAKEDOWNS
1.28 / 15m
2.16 / 15m
ATTEMPTS
4.00 / 15m
55%
ACCURACY
32%
0.50 / 15m
SUB ATT
1.00 / 15m

Nick Diaz

1.28takedowns / 15 min

Career UFC takedown rates exactly as UFCStats publishes them: takedowns landed per 15 minutes, completion rate, submission attempts per 15 minutes, and the share of takedowns tried on them that they stuffed. Attempts per 15 is the one derived figure — landed ÷ completion rate — and it is omitted wherever either input is missing. UFCStats writes 0% where no attempt was recorded at all, so a percentage of exactly zero reads “n/a” here rather than as a measured rate. “Field” is the average fighter in that weight class, or across every division where a class is too small to average. Rate bars run to the population’s 95th percentile (5.32 takedowns / 15m); a fighter above it pins the bar. Percentages are drawn on their own axis.

Ranked roster-wide

The market story

Where the price started and where it finished — the sportsbook consensus, with the vig removed. We captured no price series for this bout, so there is no chart to draw.

BJ Pennclose only
no opening line on recordclose 47.7%
Nick Diazclose only
no opening line on recordclose 52.3%
0%50%100%
OpenClosing consensus (BFO, vig removed)

We hold the closing consensus for this bout but no opening line, so the strip marks the close alone: BJ Penn 47.7%, Nick Diaz 52.3%, vig removed.

Show the numbers
CornerOpen (US)Close (US)Open %Close %Move
BJ Penn10547.7%
Nick Diaz-105-11552.3%
Opening and closing moneylines from BestFightOdds (data/refs/bfo_fighter_moneylines.csv), one row per fighter per bout, de-vigged pairwise so the two corners sum to 100% · scraped 2026-06-10 · BestFightOdds has no fighter page scraped for B.J. Penn, so that corner’s CLOSE is read from the opponent’s row, which names it explicitly. No opening line exists for that corner and none is shown.. No price series was captured for this bout, so no line is drawn between the two points.
← Every fighter on the record