Ok, let's see if I can save myself from the white-belt's-first-post stigma with this post.
A few days ago, in a blog out there, somebody clamored, as often happens, for elbows to the head of a downed opponent to be thrown out of the rulebook, because they stop too many fights due to cuts.
A couple of weeks ago, in one of sherdog's radio shows (can't remember which one), one of the hosts also mentioned this belief, and then said that he and his co-host didn't have any data to support or deny this belief.
So...finally tired of hearing arguments based on "I think" and "I believe" I decided to go look for the data.
I went through the results in the fightfinder from UFC 30 to UFC72, with all UFN and TUF finales included, and got the following numbers:
Events: 58
Fights: 457
Stoppages marked as "doctor stoppage" or "cuts": 19
So...4.15% of the fights between UFC30 and UFC72 have been stopped by a doctor or by cuts. Out of these 19, one for sure was a leg injury (Irvin's busted knee), one was an arm injury (Tim Silvia v. Mir) and I'm sure there are other non-elbow-hit related injuries that I just don't remember and didn't have the video to check out.
So...let's concede that there's 17 fights stopped from cuts resulting from elbows to the head of a downed opponent. only 3.71% of fights in the last 58 UFC events have been stopped because of cuts done with elbows (remember, this is a supposition, because there's plenty of "doctor stoppage" without a reason in the fightfinder).
In case anybody is curious, I also pulled out other data for the last 15 UFC PPVs, like knockouts and submissions and so on...you can follow the thread <a href="http://ufcmania.com/2007/06/16/ufc-72-recap-franklin-griffin-earn-decisions/">here</a> My posts are under the same nick as here, Vox.
So...3.71% of fights being stopped this way is enough reason for elbows to be outlawed in MMA? Not in my opinion...what about in yours?