Built from Matt Hughes’s own numbers — record, form, fighting style and standout rate. Not reported prose. Knockout puncher
5' 9" switch knockout puncher campaigning at Welterweight. 18 UFC wins — 8 KO/TKO, 5 submission, 5 decision. Top 7% of Welterweights: absorbs only 1.36 significant strikes a minute and connects with 53% of his significant strikes.
The facts, plainly — vitals and record from public UFC statistics; nickname, nationality and camp from the public fighter register. A field we can't source stays “pending”; it never shows a fake value. Where a fighter was born and where they fight out of come from their Wikipedia entry; where we hold neither, the hometown shown is Sherdog’s. The social accounts are the ones linked from the fighter’s own official athlete page — we don’t match handles by name. The UFC record is counted from the official results themselves, and is dated by the first and last bout it counts.
| Nickname | pending |
| Nationality | United States |
| Hometown (per Sherdog) | Hillsboro, Illinois |
| Camp | HIT Squad |
| Height | 5' 9" |
| Reach | 73" |
| Stance | Switch |
| Age | 52 |
| Date of birth | Oct 13, 1973 |
| Weight | 170 lbs. |
| Pro record | 45-9 |
| UFC record | UFC 18-7 first fight 1999-09-24 · last fight 2011-09-24 |
| Finish split | 18 UFC wins — 8 KO/TKO, 5 submission, 5 decision |
| Social |
Career averages over Matt Hughes’s UFC bouts, straight from public UFC statistics — the same eight numbers on his official record. These are the source’s figures, not our read: what we make of them is the card below.
Six 0–100 scores, each a percentile rank against the Welterweight field — not against the whole roster. Tap any i for what a score measures.
Where the strikes go — and where they land on him. Career UFC totals, straight off the tape.
Significant strikes only, as recorded by UFCStats, across the fighter's whole UFC career. Shares are raw counts — nothing here is modelled or smoothed. Accuracy is landed ÷ attempted and comes from the per-round tape, which covers slightly fewer fights than the totals do. “Field” is the average fighter in that weight class, or across every division where a class is too small to average.
The level change — how often it lands, how often it is stopped. Career UFC rates, straight off the tape.
Rate bars run to the population’s 95th percentile (5.27 takedowns / 15m); a fighter above it pins the bar. Percentages are drawn on their own axis.
Career UFC takedown rates exactly as UFCStats publishes them: takedowns landed per 15 minutes, completion rate, submission attempts per 15 minutes, and the share of takedowns tried on them that they stuffed. Attempts per 15 is the one derived figure — landed ÷ completion rate — and it is omitted wherever either input is missing. UFCStats writes 0% where no attempt was recorded at all, so a percentage of exactly zero reads “n/a” here rather than as a measured rate. “Field” is the average fighter in that weight class, or across every division where a class is too small to average.
Pro record: 45-9. In the UFC: 18-7. Matt Hughes’s last 8 UFC bouts, most recent first — the result in the cage, not our pick.
Straight off the official UFC fight record. Card names are left off on purpose: the only event labels in our data are derived, and we’d rather print nothing than print one that’s wrong.
3 post-fight bonuses since the UFC’s bonus programme began in 2006 — 2 Fight of the Night, 1 Submission of the Night.
| Date | Award | Opponent | Event | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2010-08-07 | SOTN | Submission of the Night | Ricardo Almeida | UFC 117: Silva vs Sonnen |
| 2009-05-23 | FOTN | Fight of the Night | Matt Serra | UFC 98: Evans vs Machida |
| 2006-09-23 | FOTN | Fight of the Night | BJ Penn | UFC 63: Hughes vs Penn |
The UFC's post-fight bonus programme began in 2006, so every total here is a career total since 2006. A fighter who fought only before then has no bonuses because the award did not exist yet. Fight of the Night is a shared award and is credited to both fighters. Performance, Knockout and Submission of the Night are individual awards, credited to the fighter the official record names.
Awards whose recipient the official list does not name are credited to nobody, so these counts are a floor: 245 of 1,339 Performance of the Night and 1 of 180 Submission of the Night awards are unassigned as of 11 October 2026.
| Date | Opponent | Method | Rd | Event | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2011-09-24 | L | Josh Koscheck | KO/TKO | R1 | UFC 135: Jones vs Rampage |
| 2010-11-20 | L | BJ Penn | KO/TKO | R1 | UFC 123: Rampage vs Machida |
| 2010-08-07 | W | Ricardo Almeida | Submission | R1 | UFC 117: Silva vs Sonnen |
| 2010-04-10 | W | Renzo Gracie | KO/TKO | R3 | UFC 112: Invincible |
| 2009-05-23 | W | Matt Serra | Decision (unanimous) | R3 | UFC 98: Evans vs Machida |
| 2008-06-07 | L | Thiago Alves | KO/TKO | R2 | UFC 85: Bedlam |
| 2007-12-29 | L | Georges St-Pierre | Submission | R2 | UFC 79: Nemesis |
| 2007-03-03 | W | Chris Lytle | Decision (unanimous) | R3 | UFC 68: The Uprising |
| 2006-11-18 | L | Georges St-Pierre | KO/TKO | R2 | UFC 65: Bad Intentions |
| 2006-09-23 | W | BJ Penn | KO/TKO | R3 | UFC 63: Hughes vs Penn |
| 2006-05-27 | W | Royce Gracie | KO/TKO | R1 | UFC 60: Hughes vs Gracie |
| 2005-11-19 | W | Joe Riggs | Submission | R1 | UFC 56: Full Force |
| 2005-04-16 | W | Frank Trigg | Submission | R1 | UFC 52: Couture vs Liddell 2 |
| 2004-10-22 | W | Georges St-Pierre | Submission | R1 | UFC 50: The War Of '04 |
| 2004-06-19 | W | Renato Verissimo | Decision (unanimous) | R3 | UFC 48: Payback |
| 2004-01-31 | L | BJ Penn | Submission | R1 | UFC 46: Supernatural |
| 2003-11-21 | W | Frank Trigg | Submission | R1 | UFC 45: Revolution |
| 2003-04-25 | W | Sean Sherk | Decision (unanimous) | R5 | UFC 42: Sudden Impact |
| 2002-11-22 | W | Gil Castillo | TKO (doctor) | R1 | UFC 40: Vendetta |
| 2002-07-13 | W | Carlos Newton | KO/TKO | R4 | UFC 38: Brawl at the Hall |
| 2002-03-22 | W | Hayato Sakurai | KO/TKO | R4 | UFC 36: Worlds Collide |
| 2001-11-02 | W | Carlos Newton | KO/TKO | R2 | UFC 34: High Voltage |
| 2000-12-16 | L | Dennis Hallman | Submission | R1 | UFC 29: Defense of the Belts |
| 2000-06-09 | W | Marcelo Aguiar | TKO (doctor) | R1 | UFC 26: Ultimate Field Of Dreams |
| 1999-09-24 | W | Valeri Ignatov | Decision (unanimous) | R3 | UFC 22: Only One Can be Champion |
Every date links to that bout’s own page. Card names come from the official event record; where the UFC ran two cards on one date, or that record has no row for it, the Event column is left empty rather than filled with a guess.
The 16 cities Matt Hughes has fought a UFC bout in and the hometown on the record. Every pin was looked up by name in OpenStreetMap’s gazetteer and stored with the answer it gave; nothing here is estimated.
Coastline: Natural Earth (public domain). Pins: © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL. Every host city and camp on one map.