Back to UFC 259: Blachowicz vs. Adesanya
Main Light Heavyweight

Thiago Santos vs Aleksandar Rakic

UFC 259: Blachowicz vs. Adesanya ·Meta Apex
Previous fight Next fight

Statlab take

baseline
Toss-up Confidence: High
Thiago Santos
Aleksandar Rakic
49% 51%
Why
76"
Reach
Δ 2"
78"
37
Age
Δ 8y
29
22-12
Career record
Δ 7 pp
15-6
L2
Current streak
W1
20
UFC fights in our DB
6

Logistic-regression model trained on ~5,000 UFC/DWCS fights since 2016 (71.9% test accuracy). The "Why" panel shows interpretable inputs; the headline probability comes from the model.

Statlab projections

Method classifier: 0.55 accuracy on 2083 fights
Actual result
Decision - Unanimous · Round 3
Santos: 49 sig / 0 TD · Rakic: 36 sig / 0 TD
Thiago Santos
Aleksandar Rakic
41
Sig strikes landed
50
84
Sig strikes attempted
98
52
Total strikes landed
72
0.3
Takedowns landed
1.1
1.3
Takedowns attempted
3.4
0.30
Knockdowns
0.30
40s
Control time
172s
Method
Decision
59%
KO/TKO
35%
Submission
6%

Stat regressor (GBT MultiOutput) trained on 8348 fighter-fight rows. Per-stat MAE vs naive-mean baseline: SigStrikesLanded: 25.4 (naive 28.2); SigStrikesAttempted: 52.3 (naive 59.4); TakedownsLanded: 1.1 (naive 1.3); TakedownsAttempted: 2.5 (naive 3.0); Knockdowns: 0.3 (naive 0.3); ControlTimeSeconds: 113.9 (naive 131.8); TotalStrikesLanded: 33.8 (naive 37.1).

Red corner
L2

Thiago Santos

"Marreta"
22-12
Career record
Height
74"
Reach
76"
Stance
Orthodox
Age
37
In our database 20 fights · 13-7
Last 5
L UFC Fight Night: Santos vs. Tei…
—
L UFC 239: Jones vs. Santos
—
W UFC Fight Night: Blachowicz vs.…
—
W UFC 231: Holloway vs. Ortega
—
W UFC Fight Night: Marreta vs. An…
—
Blue corner
W1

Aleksandar Rakic

"Rocket"
15-6
Career record
Height
76"
Reach
78"
Stance
Orthodox
Age
29
In our database 6 fights · 5-1
Last 5
W UFC Fight Night: Smith vs. Rakic
—
L UFC Fight Night: Edgar vs. The …
—
W UFC Fight Night: Gustafsson vs.…
—
W UFC 231: Holloway vs. Ortega
—
W UFC Fight Night: Shogun vs. Smi…
—