Ciryl Gane's distance striking rate could be a positive indicator for his future success
Ciryl Gane signed with the UFC after only three professional MMA fights. In his four fights inside the Octagon, he has proved that he belongs with an undefeated record, three stoppages and a victory over a former UFC champion.
Despite winning his first two UFC fights by submission, the majority of Gane’s fights have played out on the feet. 82% of his landed significant strikes have come at distance, which is defined as standing and not the clinch. Including only strikes at distance, Gane has a +2.74 differential (significant distance strikes landed per minute minus significant distance strikes absorbed per minute). That distance differential is the third highest among ranked fighters and ahead of notable strikers such as Alexander Volkov (+2.69), Joanna Jedrzejczyk (+2.58), Max Holloway (+2.05) and Kevin Holland (+1.96).
(Also note how Calvin Kattar’s distance striking numbers were destroyed by Holloway)
Gane only absorbs 1.88 distance strikes per minute, which is certainly respectable, but it is only 48th among ranked fighters. However, his offensive striking rate is really what drives his strong differential. In the UFC, Gane has landed 4.62 distance strikes per minute, which is 18th among ranked fighters. This high rate could be a good sign for his prospects moving forward.
One of the toughest aspects of trying to analyze fights with stats is that you run into a lot of sample size issues. For an extreme example, I once had to write a stats preview about Ben Askren vs. Demian Maia, and at the time, Askren had landed exactly zero significant strikes and one takedown in the UFC.
I try to address the sample size issue by including only ranked fighters in my analysis, but even this is not entirely effective. If we look at the top three ranked fighters in terms of distance striking differential we have Chris Daukaus (+6.03), Jamahal Hill (+3.89) and Gane. Daukaus only has three UFC fights, while Hill and Gane both have four. Daukaus has been pretty outstanding, but it is extraordinarily unlikely that he will finish his UFC career with a +6.03 distance striking differential.
Stats like knockdown rate often steadily decline as a fighter gains more cage time and fights better competition, but I was curious to see if any stats are more consistent throughout a fighter’s career. Since Gane is fighting this weekend, I decided to look at distance strikes landed per minute. There are currently 91 ranked UFC fighters who have at least 10 fights on their UFCStats.com page. For these fighters, I looked at their distance strikes landed per minute rate after four fights and after 10 fights. There were three big takeaways.
First, only three fighters with 10 or more fights in the database had a higher distance strikes landed per minute rate than Gane’s current rate in their first four fights: Halloway (5.86), Jessica Andrade (5.49) and Joanne Calderwood (5.22).
Second, out of the 91 fighters, 62, or 68%, had a higher distance strikes landed per minute rate after 10 fights than they did after four fights.
Lastly, when the two rates (after four and after 10) were thrown into a scatter plot (below), the trend line had a 0.5 r squared, which implies a moderate strength of a relationship.
This is all to say that, even though Gane is early in his UFC career, his ability to land distance strikes at a high rate could potentially be a good sign. In most cases, fighters continue to improve in this metric. Of course, the analysis only looks at fighters who were good enough to stick in the UFC for 10 fights, which is a pretty big caveat.
Gane will need both his offensive and defensive striking this weekend against Rozenstruik. The veteran kickboxer signed with the UFC in 2019 and has gone 5-1 with his only defeat coming against Francis Ngannou. In all five of his victories, he has scored a knockdown and a stoppage.
Rozenstruik’s 1.85 knockdowns per 15 minute rate ranks sixth among ranked fighters. He lands a knockdown for every 28.4 landed standing significant strikes (distance plus clinch). If you exclude the extensive and grinding Overeem fight, he has landed a knockdown per 13.75 standing significant strikes.
Per this somewhat limited analysis, Gane’s distance striking numbers appear to be a very positive indicator for his future prospects in the UFC’s heavyweight division. With that being said, four fights is still a pretty small sample size. On top of that, his opponent on Saturday is a dangerous striker with fight changing power.