Average UFC fight length by era

What counts. Fight length is elapsed time from the opening bell, derived from the round the bout ended in, the clock at that moment and how long each round of that format was booked for — so an open-format bout from the 1990s is measured by its real length. A handful of bouts carry a recorded clock that cannot be right (a decision timed short of the round it was scored in); they are left out of this page rather than averaged in. A fight is a UFC bout on the official record with a result. Draws, no-contests and overturned results are excluded from every count on this page; disqualifications and could-not-continues are counted as fights, which is why the knockout, submission and decision shares do not add up to 100%. How this table is cut. Five eras: the no-rules years, the Zuffa reboot, the boom, the expansion decade and the current one. Check us. Every number here is recomputed from the official UFC statistical record on each build — nothing on this page is typed in by hand. Search every fight to filter the same record yourself, or start from the year-by-year archive.