Rock paper scissors in the UFC
Last Saturday fella by the name of Dan Hooker beat Paul Felder in a UFC fight. Last September, Felder had beat Edson Barboza who in 2018 beat the aforementioned Dan Hooker. That, my friends, is a rock paper scissors situation.
Counting only fights in the UFC, three fighters have wins over each other in such a way 237 times. There would be hundreds more if we were to include other fight promotions. But, for the sake of brevity, we shall not.
The fighter in the most triangles is Alistair Overeem with 12.
| Fighter | Triangles |
|---|---|
| Alistair Overeem | 12 |
| Andrei Arlovski | 11 |
| Clay Guida | 11 |
| Anthony Pettis | 8 |
| Corey Anderson | 8 |
| Donald Cerrone | 8 |
| Rafael dos Anjos | 8 |
| Stefan Struve | 8 |
| B.J. Penn | 7 |
| Diego Sanchez | 7 |
| Gleison Tibau | 7 |
| Joe Lauzon | 7 |
| Lyoto Machida | 7 |
| Stipe Miocic | 7 |
And these are Overeem’s 12 triangles:
| Overeem won | Overeem lost but this guy lost to the other guy |
|---|---|
| Andrei Arlovski | Ben Rothwell |
| Andrei Arlovski | Travis Browne |
| Andrei Arlovski | Antonio Silva |
| Junior dos Santos | Stipe Miocic |
| Junior dos Santos | Ben Rothwell |
| Stefan Struve | Stipe Miocic |
| Stefan Struve | Antonio Silva |
| Fabricio Werdum | Travis Browne |
| Mark Hunt | Ben Rothwell |
| Mark Hunt | Antonio Silva |
| Roy Nelson | Antonio Silva |
| Frank Mir | Antonio Silva |
With a total of 237 records, pretty much every fighter of significance(who’s not unbeaten) is in at least one or two. For example, Ronda Rousey beat Cat Zingano who beat Amanda Nunes who beat Rousey. Or Rousey beat Miesha Tate who beat Holly Holm who beat Rousey. Jon Jones' only loss is to Matt Hamill who lost to Alexander Gustafsson and Quinton Jackson both of whom Jones beat.
Some prominent names not found here are Daniel Cormier(only lost to Jones and Stipe Miocic, but since Cormier mostly fought at light heavyweight in the UFC, he does not have common opponents with Miocic), Khabib Nurmagomedov(unbeaten), and Conor McGregor whose losses are to Nurmagomedov and Nate Diaz, who, again, mostly fought in a different weight class.
Now, do longer chains like this with more fighters exist too? Yes, and the number of possible groups will increase exponentially. 631 four-fighter chains are possible, 10,382 five-fighter, and 46,333 six-fighter chains exist and so on.