Every fighter and fight page on this site shows a small dial labeled "Grappling" on one end and "Striking" on the other, with a dot placed somewhere along it. That dot is the striker-grappler scale: 0 means a pure grappler, 100 means a pure striker, and everything in between is a rough read on how a fighter actually wins fights. It isn't a UFC statistic, and no other MMA outlet publishes an identical number — it's this site's own simplification, built to let you glance at a fight page and immediately sense what kind of fight you're about to watch.

What the number is actually showing

The scale sits directly under a fighter's style label — things like "Knockout Artist," "Elite Grappler," or "Wrestle-Boxer" — and a short list of style tags underneath that. The dial is the compressed, visual version of that same read: a single position on a line instead of a paragraph of description.

It's built from the pieces already on the page: a fighter's finish profile (how many of their wins came by knockout versus submission versus decision), their style tags, and whatever striking and grappling numbers are available and verified for them. It is not run through a public formula, and it isn't meant to survive a debate about whether a fighter is a 62 or a 58. It's an editorial simplification, closer to a scouting-report summary than a precise measurement.

Reading the two extremes

At the striker end of the scale, a rating near 95 shows up on fighters whose entire game plan is standing and trading. Stephen Thompson, a karate-based counter-striker who rarely looks for a takedown, and Derrick Lewis, a heavyweight who wins almost entirely on one-punch power, both sit up near that end. Their style tags back it up — no wrestling entries, no submission mentions, just striking vocabulary.

At the grappling end, a rating near 5 to 10 belongs to fighters like Bia Mesquita and Marcus Buchecha, both decorated jiu-jitsu competitors whose UFC style tags read "submission-first" and "limited striking." A low number here isn't a knock on a fighter — it's a description of where their offense actually comes from, and it usually pairs with a heavy submission share in their finish rate.

Reading the middle

The middle of the scale is where most UFC roster fighters actually land, and it's arguably more useful than either extreme because it separates two different kinds of "well-rounded." Aaron Pico sits around 45 — a wrestler by background who has developed real knockout power, so his dial leans slightly toward grappling even though a chunk of his wins are finishes with his hands. Amanda Ribas, by contrast, sits closer to 55: a judo and jiu-jitsu black belt whose style tags now lean on fast combinations as much as grappling credentials.

Neither fighter is "generic" for landing near the middle. The number is telling you their toolkit doesn't lean hard in one direction, which is a real style trait — it just takes the style tags and bio alongside it to see which direction the balance actually tilts.

Why this isn't an official metric

No sanctioning body, and no other major MMA outlet, publishes a standardized striker-grappler number, because there isn't a clean formula for it. Two fighters with similar dial positions can win completely different ways — one through volume boxing, another through counter kicks — and the scale doesn't distinguish between them any more than a compass tells you the terrain. It's a summary, not a substitute for the fuller numbers on a fighter's page: takedown stats, finish profile, and career record all say more on their own than the dial does by itself.

The scale also doesn't update in real time the way a stat line does. A style label and its dial position get revisited as a fighter's career develops — a wrestler who adds real punching power over several fights, for instance, will drift toward the striking end over time — but it's a periodically maintained editorial read, not a stat recalculated after every fight the way significant strikes or control time are.

How to actually use it before a fight

The scale earns its keep as a matchup tool more than as a standalone number. Two fighters both sitting near 90 tells you almost certainly you're watching a standup fight, since neither side has much incentive or ability to change the terrain. Two fighters both under 15 usually means the fight goes to the mat early and stays there. The interesting matchups are the mismatched ones — a 90 against a 15 is a fighter who wants to keep the fight standing against a fighter who wants the opposite, and whoever wins that argument in the first exchange usually dictates the whole fight.

Treat the dial as a starting point for that question, not the answer to it. It tells you what each fighter wants. It doesn't tell you who's going to get it, which is exactly what the rest of the fight page — and the fight itself — is for.

The takeaway

The striker-grappler scale is a fast, visual shorthand for a fighter's style built from their finish profile, style tags, and available stats — a site-specific simplification, not a UFC-recognized number. Use it to spot a stylistic mismatch at a glance before a fight, then check the finish profile and grappling numbers on the same page for the fuller picture the single dot can't carry on its own.