How Long Is An Mma Round

• How Long Is A Ufc Round
• How Long Are Mma Rounds
• How Long Do Mma Rounds Last
• Mma Round By Round
• How Long Is An Mma Round Length

As a newfound MMA fan, you might wonder how long an MMA match lasts, especially if you’ve never watched other combat sports, such as boxing. How many rounds is a fight? What decides the number of rounds? How much rest time is given between rounds?

UFC 259: The UFC's exclusive champ-champ club has some advice for Israel Adesanya. Mixed martial arts (MMA) sometimes referred to as cage fighting, is a full-contact combat sport based on striking, grappling and ground fighting, incorporating techniques from various combat sports and martial arts from around the world.

If you’re looking for the answer to these questions, well then look no further my friend, because in this post, I will cover all the factors involved in deciding the length of a UFC fight. How long does a UFC fight last?

A UFC fight can last either 3 or 5 rounds, with each round being 5 minutes long. In between rounds, the fighters are given one minute of rest time. This means a 3-round fight can last up to 17 minutes, while a 5-round fight can last up to a maximum of 29 minutes when you include rest time.

However, this short answer doesn’t look at the whole picture. In the rest of the post, I will cover all the details that go into the length of an MMA match.

Also, this post specifically covers the length of a single UFC match. If you were instead looking for the length of an entire UFC card, check out this post: How Long Is A UFC Event?

• While most heavyweight fights are set at 12 rounds of 3 minutes each, some promoters can also shorten the duration to 8 or 10 rounds. It all depends on the fight and the promoters. Why Did Boxing Shorten.
• Typically though, despite the number of rounds per fight, the length of the round is typically the same. Under the Unified Rules of MMA, all rounds in a fight are five minutes long.
• The fights are slated for 3x5 minute rounds, and main events (or title fights) 5x5 minute rounds. However, it greatly vary on the fighters involved. For instance, last week we just witnessed a fight finish in mere 5.

What Decides 5 Rounds Vs 3 Rounds

So now you know how long a UFC fight can be. But now you’re wondering, Why are some fights 5 rounds instead of 3? Well in short, 5 round fights are reserved for Championship fights, as well as main event fights.

Typically, MMA fights are 3 rounds, as already mentioned previously. However, championship fights are expected to not only demand a greater challenge from the fighters, but also a better viewing experience for the fans.

Increasing a fight from 3 rounds to 5 makes it more entertaining, and also lengthens possible viewership time. So whenever a UFC Championship title is on the line, the fight will be scheduled for five rounds.

What about main events? The last fight on a UFC event, otherwise known as the main event, will usually also be scheduled for five rounds. This is for the same reasons as before, such as challenging the fighters and increasing the entertainment value.

This includes both pay-per-view events as well as other less watched UFC cards. Of course, there are exceptions to this 5-round rule, typically when the main event changes on short notice.

Such was the case when Israel Adesanya vs Anderson Silva was moved to the main event of UFC 234, when Middleweight Champion Robert Whittaker was rendered unable to fight one day prior to the event. Despite Adesanya vs Silva being made the new main event, the fight remained scheduled for 3 rounds.

How Often Does An MMA Fight Go The Distance?

So we know how long a fight can be scheduled for, a maximum of 29 minutes. But perhaps you came here looking for the average length of an MMA fight, including finishes.

How Long Is A Ufc Round

Of course, the average length of a fight will be less when we take into consideration the fights that end early. So to find the true length of an average UFC fight, I took the current top 15 pound-for-pound fighters in the UFC. I then looked at each fighter’s last three fights, to see at what time it ended.

Taking three fights from 15 fighters gives us a data set of 45 fights to collect times from. From there, we simply find the average fight time of all the fights collected. So what were the results?

For the 45 fights collected, the average fight length was 17 minutes (almost exactly). This means the average UFC fight ends 2 minutes into the 4th round.

Of the fights collected, 25 did NOT go the distance, meaning they ended in a TKO, KO, or submission. This means about 55.5% of UFC fights end before the scheduled time limit.

These averages should be taken with a grain of salt, as we can’t possibly expect 45 fights to match the average of thousands of UFC fights that have happened in the past. If you would like to see the stats, you can see the spreadsheet here.

Fight Length In The Early UFC Days

How Long Are Mma Rounds

I am now going to cover fight length in the early days of the UFC, on the off chance that you were searching for that. It would be a reasonable thing to search, as you might be watching UFC 5, having watched 30 minutes of the main event, wondering, “Will this ever end?!”

The 5-minute rounds that we are familiar with today were not introduced into the UFC until UFC 21, after which the round system became a rule for most MMA fights. However, prior to this, there was no round system in MMA, and there initially wasn’t a time limit.

The longest fight in the UFC’s history was Royce Gracie vs Ken Shamrock at UFC 5. The match lasted 36 minutes, with no rounds or rest periods, before being stopped and declared a draw.

So there is really no way of knowing how long a UFC fight held before UFC 21 will last, except that it will be last than 36 minutes.

Conclusion

I hope this post helped clear up any confusion you might have had about the UFC’s round system.

In short, a UFC fight can last either 3 or 5 rounds, and each round is 5 minutes long. At the end of each round, there is a one-minute rest period. This means a fight can last a maximum of 17 minutes for a three-round fight, and 29 minutes for a five-round fight.

If you liked this post, feel free to check out similar ones on the Martial Arts History page. Thanks for reading!

When you grow up with sports, either playing them or watching them, you never question some parts of the game. You think the game will never change, or more likely, you don’t think about the game in that way at all. And then something comes along that changes your perspective on things. For me that was my introduction to mixed martial arts (MMA). I remember when MMA went from just one round with no time limit, to a single long round with perhaps an overtime round, and then to 3 rounds of 5 minutes. And it’s still changing. Recently a new rule was adopted in which main event fights may be the same length as title fights, at 5 rounds of 5 minutes.

It’s a great thing to witness the birth of a sport. When it changes so dramatically in such a short period of time, it gives you a new perspective on all sports. Perhaps every sport you watch or play should be longer. Perhaps it should be shorter. It’s hard to say until you take a hard look at the effects that changing sport periods has on the game itself. A recent study in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning covered one aspect of that topic.

In the study, researchers looked at variable lengths of play for soccer. In many ball sports, not only are periods of a given length but players can also be swapped out when needed. This adds an extra dynamic to which coaches need to pay close attention. However, in this study, the soccer players were made to remain in their test games for the entirety of each period. They did a single 16-minute period, two periods of 8 minutes with a 2-minute rest, and four periods of 4 minutes with a 1-minute rest. The researchers looked at several variables influencing athleticism during the game play.

Now, I have no doubt you can guess the results. The players were faster in the beginning of each test, and the players with shorter intervals were faster, even at the end, than players who had only one period. What’s important here is how to use these results to further our sporting endeavors.

Just because athleticism increases as period length decreases, this doesn’t mean all sports should have very short periods. An athlete needs sufficient time to get the job done, so there’s a balance that needs to be achieved to create the greatest experience for both athlete and fan. As mentioned prior, in many ball sports this consideration can be made immediately. A coach can have at least some control over how long a player is on the field, and should allow players to rest when possible to improve their performance.

For many other relatively new sports, or new organizations controlling more traditional sports, we can try to keep this facet of athletics in mind and strive for an optimal period length. There was, and for some people still is, resistance to the idea of changing round length in MMA. Many purists believe there should be no time limit, even though adding rounds greatly improved the sport. And I say that understanding the appeal of no time limits, but let’s be honest, MMA is better with rounds for everyone – athletes and spectators.

How about for the sports you like to watch or play? Are the periods, rounds, halves, etc. the right length or should they change?

How Long Do Mma Rounds Last

References

Mma Round By Round

1. David Casamichana, et. al., “Influence of Different Training Regimes on Physical and Physiological Demands During Small-Sided Soccer Games: Continuous vs. Intermittent Format,” Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research, 27(3): 690–697, 2013

How Long Is An Mma Round Length

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