Most Submission Attempts in UFC History

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2026 Stats

About Most Submission Attempts in UFC History

Career submission attempts from UFC round-by-round records (min. 8 attempts over 5 bouts)

This leaderboard ranks UFC fighters by the total number of submission attempts they have made inside the Octagon. It is the companion to our most submissions board, which counts only the ones that worked. Read together they separate two things the highlight reels tend to blur: how relentlessly a fighter hunts for the finish, and how often that hunt actually ends the night. Every figure is summed straight from UFC round-by-round stat sheets, from bouts that actually took place.

Volume hunters and converters

The split between attempts and finishes is the whole argument for this page. Jim Miller has thrown more submission attempts than almost anyone in UFC history and finished only a fraction of them; Demian Maia threw 27 and finished 11. Miller is a volume hunter, forever working for a guillotine or an armbar in scrambles most fighters would abandon, while Maia is a converter who did not need to ask twice. Neither profile is better than the other, and the raw attempt column will never tell you which is which — that is exactly why it should not be read alone.

The counter-examples matter just as much. Nik Lentz made 26 attempts in the UFC for two submission wins, and Diego Sanchez made 18 with no submission finishes at all. Those are not failures of grappling so much as a signature: pressure fighters who chase chokes in transition against opponents who defend them. A high attempt total is a style fingerprint first and a skill claim a distant second.

Note also that this board rewards longevity in the same way our octagon time leaderboard does. Most of the names near the top have twenty or more statted bouts, because attempts accumulate with rounds fought. If you want the single most dangerous night of grappling rather than a career total, the most submission attempts in a fight page isolates it. And to weigh any of it against overall quality of competition, cross-reference the ELO rankings or browse the wider UFC stats collection.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who has the most submission attempts in UFC history?

Jim Miller, with 52 SUB attempts. Second: Charles Oliveira (51). Third: Chris Lytle (31). Counted from UFC bouts recorded on MMA.SOCIAL — UFC appearances only, not a fighter's full professional record.

How is a submission attempt counted here?

A submission attempt is any choke or joint lock the official statisticians judged a genuine attempt to finish, whether or not it worked. Every UFC bout with a round-by-round stat sheet records an attempt count for each fighter in each round, and this board adds them up across a career. The data only ever exists per round, so there are no per-fight totals alongside it to double count, and the attempt column has no missing values, so nothing is estimated.

Does a big attempt total mean a fighter is a great submission grappler?

No. Attempts measure how often a fighter hunts, not how often they catch. Nik Lentz made 26 attempts in the UFC and finished 2 of them, and Diego Sanchez made 18 across 32 statted bouts without a single submission win, while Demian Maia converted 11 of his 27. Read this board next to most submissions, which counts only the attempts that ended the fight.

Why the minimum of 8 attempts and 5 statted bouts?

Unlike a rate or a percentage, a running total cannot be inflated by a tiny sample, so the floor is not there to protect the top of the board. It is there to stop the long tail of one-and-two-attempt rows from burying the fighters this page is actually about. The trade-off is that a few genuine short-career hunters are excluded, such as James Wilks with 12 attempts in 4 bouts.

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