I’ve heard the term “Ring Rust” a lot lately and wondered if it was true. It seems most people agree that the longer a figher takes off the more likely they will lose. I created a data set and visualization of how much time a figher takes between fights and if they won or lost. I’ve provided filters for time off, a date range, and weight class. The visualization provides a trend line indicating how time off affects the result.

The visualization above shows that the opposite is true, at least for the predefined filter settings, that the longer a figher takes off the MORE likely they will win. The predefined filter settings are more than 1 year since their previous fight and fights since 2013.

Those predefined filter settings are not random. Something happened around 2013 that caused time off to change between a disadvantage to an advantage.

It is interesting to note that the steepest line is 2016 and onwards. This timing lines up with USADA testing, coincidence?