Jon Jones fought 24 times in the UFC and was never knocked down. Seventy-seven rounds, 22 different opponents, and not one of them put him on the canvas.
He is one of only 92 of the 632 fighters with ten or more UFC bouts (14.6%) who have never been knocked down, and the one who kept that record clean across the most fights. The other answer to the question belongs to a bantamweight who took more punishment than anyone on the list and never went down either.
Everything below is the same measurement we built in The Chin Index — knockdowns absorbed per UFC fight — pointed at the top of the list instead of the bottom, and re-run on every UFC fight through September 19, 2026.
Who has the best chin in UFC?
Jon Jones has the best chin in UFC history by the record: 24 UFC fights, 77 rounds and zero knockdowns absorbed, the longest clean record of any fighter. Measured by punishment survived, the answer is Pedro Munhoz, who absorbed 1,153 significant head strikes across 22 UFC fights without once being knocked down.
I. How You Measure a Chin
There is no "chin" column on a stat sheet. What there is, for every round of nearly every UFC fight since 1993 (all but 21 of 8,907), is the number of knockdowns each fighter scored. Flip that around and you get the number each fighter absorbed. Divide by fights and you have the Chin Index: knockdowns absorbed per UFC fight. Lower is better; zero is perfect.
Two rules carry over from the original piece. Leaderboards require 10 UFC fights, because one bad night can turn a four-fight career into a 1.00. And a knockdown is not a knockout: a fighter can go down and win, and can lose by TKO — ground strikes, a doctor's stoppage — without ever being dropped. That is why a few of the fighters below carry a KO/TKO loss next to a zero.
Across the 632 fighters at the floor, the league absorbs 0.199 knockdowns per fight, or roughly one knockdown for every 192 significant strikes that land. The best chins in the sport have taken hundreds of those strikes and never paid the tax.
II. The Granite List
The Best Chins in the UFC
Every fighter here has 10+ UFC fights and has never been knocked down. Two ways to rank them: the longest clean record, or the most punishment survived.
Knockdowns absorbed = the opponent's knockdown count in UFCStats round data. Same definition and 10-fight floor as The Chin Index.
Ninety-two fighters have ten or more UFC fights and no knockdown against their name. Ranked by how long they kept the record clean, with ties going to the fighter who absorbed more significant strikes:
| Rank | Fighter | UFC Fights | Sig. Strikes Absorbed | Head Strikes Absorbed | KO/TKO Losses | Era |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Jon Jones | 24 | 798 | 385 | 0 | 2008–2024 |
| 2 | Tim Elliott | 23 | 868 | 628 | 0 | 2012–2026 |
| 3 | Pedro Munhoz | 22 | 1,587 | 1,153 | 0 | 2014–2024 |
| 4 | Michael Chiesa | 22 | 350 | 181 | 1 | 2012–2026 |
| 5 | Gillian Robertson | 21 | 655 | 492 | 1 | 2017–2026 |
| 6 | Rose Namajunas | 19 | 1,004 | 510 | 1 | 2014–2026 |
| 7 | Raquel Pennington | 19 | 966 | 555 | 1 | 2013–2024 |
| 8 | Tecia Pennington | 19 | 925 | 498 | 0 | 2014–2025 |
| 9 | Anthony Johnson | 19 | 215 | 133 | 1 | 2007–2017 |
| 10 | Marvin Vettori | 18 | 1,406 | 881 | 0 | 2016–2025 |
The two columns in the middle are the ones that separate a great chin from a great defense. Michael Chiesa has absorbed 350 significant strikes in 22 fights — he is a grappler who spends very little time in exchanges, and his zero is mostly a zero of exposure. Pedro Munhoz has absorbed 1,587, more than any other fighter on the list, 1,153 of them to the head. He fought Aljamain Sterling, Jose Aldo, Frankie Edgar, Cody Garbrandt, Sean O'Malley and Dominick Cruz, spent 54 rounds in the cage, and never touched the canvas from a strike. Flip the chart to "most head strikes absorbed" and Munhoz, Vettori (881) and Lauren Murphy (731) are the top three: the people who took the most and gave nothing back.
The longest clean records still active (at least one fight in the 12 months to September 19, 2026) are Tim Elliott at 23 fights, Michael Chiesa at 22 and Gillian Robertson at 21. Elliott moved into second place overall on September 12 with a decision over Edgar Chairez; Robertson fought Mackenzie Dern for the strawweight title in August 2026 and is still on the list.
III. Jon Jones, Specifically
The reason Jones is the answer and not just the leader is the quality of the people who tried. His 24 fights came against 22 different opponents, 20 of whom own at least one UFC knockout; between them they have 113 UFC KO/TKO wins. Mauricio Rua, Vitor Belfort, Thiago Santos, Stipe Miocic. None of them put him down.
He also has not been hiding. Alexander Gustafsson landed 63 significant head strikes on him in their first fight; Dominick Reyes landed 41; Daniel Cormier landed 40 in their first meeting. Those are the three most head strikes anyone has landed on Jones in a single night, and they produced three decisions and zero knockdowns.
The honest caveat is the volume column. Jones absorbs 33.3 significant strikes per fight, less than half of Munhoz's 72. Range, clinch control and the wrestling threat keep most fights from becoming a test of his chin at all. That is not a knock on the record — not getting hit clean is the first line of durability — but it is why "best chin" has two answers depending on whether you are counting fights survived or strikes survived.
IV. The Other End of the Index
The Most Knockdowns Absorbed per Fight
The other end of the same index: highest knockdowns absorbed per UFC fight, minimum 10 fights.
Same index, sorted the other way. This is a factual list, not a character judgement: several of these fighters were champions, and every one of them made the ten-fight floor by being good enough to keep getting booked.
| Rank | Fighter | KD Absorbed / Fight | KDs in Fights | KO/TKO Losses |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Thomas Almeida | 0.80 | 8 in 10 | 3 |
| 2 | Keith Jardine | 0.77 | 10 in 13 | 4 |
| 3 | Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira | 0.73 | 8 in 11 | 3 |
| 4 | Sergio Moraes | 0.71 | 10 in 14 | 3 |
| T-5 | Dominick Cruz | 0.70 | 7 in 10 | 2 |
| T-5 | Nate Quarry | 0.70 | 7 in 10 | 2 |
| 7 | Matt Frevola | 0.67 | 8 in 12 | 4 |
| T-8 | Antonio Silva | 0.64 | 7 in 11 | 7 |
Ties share a rank: Nate Landwehr and SeungWoo Choi were also knocked down 7 times in 11 fights, level with Antonio Silva.
The gap between the two ends of the index is a factor of infinity, which is not useful, so use the league line instead: 0.199 per fight. Almeida's 0.80 is four times that. Munhoz, at 0.00 across 22 fights, is 4.4 expected knockdowns below it.
V. Where Knockdowns Are Rarest
Knockdowns Absorbed by Division
Average knockdowns absorbed per fighter-fight, by the weight class each bout was contested at. Amber = women's divisions; dashed line = all divisions combined (0.219).
Bucket every bout by the weight class it was actually contested at and the women's divisions are in a different sport. Women's flyweight (0.082), women's strawweight (0.088) and women's bantamweight (0.090) all absorb fewer than a tenth of a knockdown per fighter-fight. Every men's division sits between lightweight's 0.205 and light heavyweight's 0.265.
The chart's dashed line, 0.219, is a different average from the 0.199 league line in sections I and IV: it pools every bout in the twelve divisions, fighters with fewer than ten UFC fights included, where the league line counts only fighters at the ten-fight floor.
| Division | KD Absorbed / Fighter-Fight | Sig. Strikes per KD | Bouts Ending KO/TKO |
|---|---|---|---|
| Women's Flyweight | 0.082 | 619 | 16.7% |
| Women's Strawweight | 0.088 | 578 | 13.9% |
| Women's Bantamweight | 0.090 | 510 | 21.9% |
| Lightweight | 0.205 | 176 | 29.7% |
| Flyweight | 0.222 | 178 | 23.6% |
| Featherweight | 0.233 | 180 | 29.6% |
| Bantamweight | 0.238 | 176 | 26.0% |
| Heavyweight | 0.239 | 122 | 51.5% |
| Middleweight | 0.240 | 136 | 38.0% |
| Welterweight | 0.244 | 146 | 33.2% |
| Light Heavyweight | 0.265 | 122 | 45.2% |
Two things worth noticing. Men's flyweight (0.222) is not the safe division the original article's walking-weight buckets suggested — that number was men's and women's 125-pounders blended. And heavyweight is not where fighters get dropped most; it is where a dropped fighter stays down. Heavyweights absorb 0.239 knockdowns per fight, level with middleweights' 0.240 and below welterweights' 0.244, but 51.5% of their bouts end by KO/TKO against middleweight's 38.0%. A light heavyweight goes down once every 122 significant strikes; a women's flyweight once every 619.
VI. The Champions' Chins
The most recent title-fight winner in each division, scored on the same index. "Champion" here means exactly that — the winner of the division's latest title bout as flagged on UFCStats — so it cannot tell an interim belt from an undisputed one, and it cannot see vacancies or stripped belts.
| Division | Fighter | UFC Fights | KDs Absorbed | KD / Fight |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Women's Flyweight | Valentina Shevchenko | 19 | 1 | 0.053 |
| Bantamweight | Petr Yan | 16 | 1 | 0.063 |
| Heavyweight | Ciryl Gane | 14 | 1 | 0.071 |
| Flyweight | Joshua Van | 12 | 1 | 0.083 |
| Light Heavyweight | Carlos Ulberg | 11 | 1 | 0.091 |
| Welterweight | Islam Makhachev | 19 | 2 | 0.105 |
| Middleweight | Sean Strickland | 25 | 3 | 0.120 |
| Featherweight | Alexander Volkanovski | 18 | 4 | 0.222 |
| Lightweight | Justin Gaethje | 16 | 4 | 0.250 |
| Women's Strawweight | Mackenzie Dern | 17 | 6 | 0.353 |
Two of those rows need a footnote the data cannot supply. Ciryl Gane's is the interim heavyweight belt. And Valentina Shevchenko vacated the women's flyweight title through injury on September 5, 2026; the vacant belt is scheduled to be contested at UFC 332 on October 3. Kayla Harrison (0 in 3 fights) is below the floor and left off.
Nobody on the list is at zero, which says something about how titles get won: the cleanest sheets — Shevchenko, Yan, Gane — sit at one knockdown across a long career, and the newest name, Joshua Van, who beat Alexandre Pantoja in a title fight on September 19, has been dropped once in 12 UFC fights. The one fighter with a genuinely high number, Mackenzie Dern at 0.353, holds a belt anyway in the division where knockdowns are second-rarest. Justin Gaethje's 0.250 is the highest of any men's champion, and he is a reminder that the index measures exposure as much as physiology: he absorbs 86.3 significant strikes per fight, more than anyone else in the table.
VII. What a Chin Tells You
A knockdown is the single most legible event in a fight. It swings rounds, it ends up in every highlight package, and it moves judges more than anything else that happens in a round — a problem we took apart in Judging Is Broken. Not being knocked down is therefore worth more than the round it saves.
The two answers to the question also describe two different kinds of durability. Jones's zero was built on distance, clinch control and a wrestling threat that kept most exchanges from ever testing his chin. Munhoz's zero was built in the pocket, at 72 significant strikes absorbed a night. The index cannot tell you which is harder; it can only tell you that both have been done, and how rarely.
Jon Jones fought 24 times in the UFC and was never knocked down. Pedro Munhoz took 1,153 significant strikes to the head and was never knocked down. Everyone else is chasing one of those two numbers.
Based on 41,816 UFC fighter-rounds across 8,907 fights and 2,746 fighters with round-level data, 1993 through September 19, 2026.
Methodology: Data sourced from UFCStats.com. Data as of September 19, 2026 (UFC 331, the most recent event with results in our database). Knockdowns absorbed = the sum of the opponent's knockdowns in round_stats across every round a fighter fought; the Chin Index is that total divided by UFC fights — the identical definition and 10-fight leaderboard floor used in The Chin Index. Significant and head strikes absorbed are the opponent's sig_str_landed / sig_head_landed summed the same way. KO/TKO losses count career losses where method = 'KO/TKO'. Division figures bucket each bout by fight_details.weight_class (not the fighter's walking weight); Open Weight, Catch Weight and Super Heavyweight bouts are excluded, and "per fighter-fight" divides a division's total knockdowns by twice its bouts. Women's Featherweight (30 bouts) is in the chart but left out of the table as too small a sample. "Still active" = at least one fight in the 12 months up to the data date. Champions are the winners of each division's most recent title bout (UFCStats belt flag, top-two bout on the card, within the two years up to the data date) — interim and undisputed belts are indistinguishable in the data, and vacated belts are invisible to it; Women's Featherweight has had no title bout in that window and is omitted. The interim and vacancy notes in section VI come from the UFC's rankings page and news reports, not from the database. Jones's opponent KO counts are each opponent's career UFC KO/TKO wins. Rankings generated by analysis/scripts/article22_best_chin.py; every figure is re-derived from the database by analysis/scripts/validate_article22.py.