UFC on Fox 15: Rockhold vs. Machida

Luke Rockhold (13-2-0) vs. Lyoto Machida (22-5-0)

Luke Rockhold looks to win his fourth consecutive fight on Apr. 18 when he takes on Lyoto “The Dragon” Machida in Newark.

Rockhold has had a fantastic start to his UFC career, winning his past three fights after losing his debut against Vitor Belfort via knockout back in mid-2013. Since then he has a knockout and two submissions, getting the knockout of the night in the win over Costas Philippou and then two amazing submissions; one being named the best of the year while the other earned him performance of the night honors. Overall in his career as an MMA fighter, Rockhold has leaned towards the submission, earning eight of his 13 career wins with this strategy and has used the rear-naked chokehold four times. In 10 of those 13 victories, he won in the first round and has shown he has the dominance to compete at this level moving forward. Machida has been around for quite some time and the 36-year-old is coming off a quick knockout of C.B. Dollaway in just over a minute, but has also lost twice in his past five times in the octagon. Both of the defeats came in a decision and 11 of his 22 career wins have also come after the full amount of time has gone by. The former light heavyweight champion can also get it done with knockouts as he has won with this method on nine different occasions. Rockhold certainly has the edge in height, reach and age, but the experience and talents of Machida could prove too much in this one.

Rockhold has been one of the more aggressive fighters in the UFC recently, landing 3.60 significant strikes per minute despite an accuracy of 42% on those attempts. They have obviously gotten his opponents off-guard with him winning each of the past three fights in fewer than six minutes as he’s only taken a total of 21 significant strikes in that time. He parlays those solid punches and kicks into an average of 1.4 submissions attempted per 15 minutes and that is his go-to move when he is looking to finish off a match. He gets into these situations due to phenomenal defense, taking a mere 1.86 significant strikes against him per minute as he fends off 65% of the attempts. He also is a nuisance to get on the mat, defending successfully against the takedown in 72% of opportunities and has never lost by a submission in his career. His last fight was against Michael Bisping and he did a great job on defense, allowing Bisping to land a meager 16-of-65 strike attempts (24%) before performing a guillotine choke early in the second round. If Machida hopes to get a win against this 30-year-old he should hope a knockout is on its way.

“The Dragon” has been fighting in the UFC since early 2007 and he can credit plenty of his success to the multitude of fighting styles that he has learned over the years. He takes pieces of shotokan karate, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, sumo, muay thai and wrestling to prepare for any given situation thrown his way. He’s used those methods to land 53% of his significant strike attempts at a rate of 2.65 per minute as he has also done a solid job at deflecting 63% of strikes against him. He didn’t even allow C.B. Dalloway to get in a landed strike in December, ending the match quickly with 12-of-19 strikes landing and a final kick to the body which ended it. All of Machida’s fighting styles have allowed him plenty of opportunities to takedown his opponent and he has done so to the tune of 1.41 takedowns per 15 minutes at a 65% accuracy. He tends to stay upright as well, with opponents being successful at dropping him just 23% of the time. It is tough to go against this veteran due to his numerous strategies and experience and it will be interesting to see how Rockhold approaches the situation.