I built a BJJ Stats Database—Submission Trends, Athlete Records & Elo Rankings

TL;DR: Built a BJJ Stats Database with 28,000+ matchups and an experimental ELO ranking system. Check out the stats here and Elo rankings here.

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I’m excited to share a new project I’ve been working on, a BJJ Stats Database. It’s still in its early stages, but I think it’s at least interesting to mess around with that this stage (but wouldn’t trust it’s accuracy yet).

• Submission Trends – See breakdowns of submissions that ended matches.

• Event Breakdowns – Submission/Result breakdowns and match-ups from events.

• Athlete Records – Track wins, losses, and submission stats for competitors.

You can check out the BJJ stats database here.

This one isn't too surprising, but for example, the Omoplata only accounts for 1.3% of submission finishes, and it’s significantly more effective in gi (1.7%) vs. no-gi (0.5%). I break down why this happens (and why the Omoplata works better as a control position than a submission) in a recent YouTube video.

Omoplata only accounts for 1.3% of submission finishes

Beta ELO Rankings

I’ve also rolled out a BJJ ELO ranking system as an “interesting experiment.”

You can see the current Elo rankings here.

ELO is a rating system famously used in chess, but I’ve adapted it for BJJ using match outcomes from the BJJ database. It’s still in beta, and there are a few important caveats:

• No differentiation by weight class, belt rank, or event importance (yet).

• Draws aren’t factored in.

• Inactive competitors don’t decay in rating.

• The data pool is very incomplete.

Because of all that, you might see some unexpected shifts or weird outliers in the rankings, but still think people might be interested.

Where Is the Data From?

I'm getting results from various sources, aiming to compile them directly from event results whenever possible, sometimes by watching event footage to keep everything accurate and up to date. It's surprisingly difficult to get results from some past events.

Interested in an API?

If you’re a data/software engineer (or someone curious) who’d like to tinker with this data, let me know in the comments and shoot me a DM. I’m considering making an API later next week if there’s enough interest.

Like I said, it’s early days, and there’s a ton of refinement (and more match logging) to come. Check it out, and if you have feedback, ideas, etc, I’d love to hear from you!