Fewest Significant Strikes Absorbed Per Minute

Filters All divisions · All time · 10+ fights

Your move

Daily game #35 Who Has More? Two fighters, one stat. Ten rounds. Play today's 10 Pick'em · Sat Oct 31 UFC Fight Night: Moicano vs. Nolan Pick every winner before the first bell. Make your picks Last card · Oct 24 UFC 333: Volkanovski vs. Evloev Score every fight 1 to 100. Rate the fights

2026 Stats

About Fewest Significant Strikes Absorbed Per Minute

The least incoming traffic per minute of octagon time - minimum 5 fights and 35 minutes of cage time

This leaderboard ranks UFC fighters by the fewest significant strikes absorbed per minute of octagon time. It is the low end of our most strikes absorbed per minute board, built from identical arithmetic and the same qualifying gate — at least five scored fights and 35 minutes of recorded cage time — plus one more: round statistics for at least 80% of the fighter's UFC bouts, so a career that is only partly recorded cannot lead on the part that was.

How the per-minute normalisation works

Fight time is taken from the round and clock time at which each bout ended, so a fight stopped at 2:30 of round two counts as seven and a half minutes rather than ten. Career seconds and career absorbed strikes are each summed before the division is performed, which makes the figure a true time-weighted rate rather than an average of averages.

What a low number actually measures

It measures damage that did not arrive, and there is more than one way to achieve that. Head movement, range management and a long jab all suppress it — but so does spending the round on top of someone, and grapplers are well represented near the top of this list as a result. That is a fair description of what happened in those fights, but it is why this board is best read next to the offensive one: a fighter who appears high on strikes landed per minute and low here is winning exchanges outright rather than avoiding them. For the percentage view of the same question see best striking defence.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who has absorbed the fewest significant strikes per minute in UFC history?

Ken Shamrock and 1 other, level on 1.16 absorbed PER MIN. A record shared 2 ways, from Ken Shamrock to Pat Sabatini; no one stands second. Counted from UFC bouts recorded on MMA.SOCIAL — UFC appearances only, not a fighter's full professional record.

What does strikes absorbed per minute mean?

It is how many significant strikes an opponent lands on a fighter for every minute that fighter is in a live fight. We total every significant strike landed against them across their career, total the real seconds they have actually spent fighting, and divide. A fighter at 2.00 is being hit twice a minute, which is thirty times over a full three-round fight. This is the measure the UFC publishes as SApM, and this board ranks the lowest figures first.

Doesn't this just reward wrestlers?

Partly, and it is the most important thing to know about this end of the scale. A fighter who spends most of a round in top position is barely being struck at all, so control shows up here as elite defence. That is why the top of this board leans so heavily on wrestlers, many of them from the 1990s and 2000s. Read it as how little damage came back rather than how good the head movement was — a pure striker near the top of this list is doing something genuinely rare.

How is this different from striking defence?

Striking defence is a percentage: the share of what was thrown at a fighter that missed. This is a volume: how much actually landed per minute, regardless of how much was thrown. A fighter can have modest striking defence and still appear here if opponents rarely threw at them, and vice versa. Read the two together — our best striking defence board covers the percentage side.

Why are there two minimums instead of one?

Because a fight-count floor alone is not enough for a rate. A fighter with five quick finishes might have only ten minutes of recorded octagon time, and almost any absorbed total across ten minutes produces a misleading per-minute figure. Requiring 35 minutes of cage time as well as five scored fights means everyone here has sustained it over more than two full fights' worth of action. The same double floor is used on strikes landed per minute, most strikes absorbed per minute and takedowns per minute.

Every UFC statistics leaderboard

Stats Hub

Share image