UFC 225 is in the books. CM Punk, fresh off of his judicial victory, got his clock cleaned, again, so I’ll just come out and say it: CM Punk stinks as a MMA fighter.

Oh, I can hear what all the Punk fans and supporters are going to say: ‘He gave so much heart’, ‘He kept fighting’, or, my personal favorite, ‘It takes a lot of balls to do what he did. He was brave. You try getting in that Octagon.’

Well, first of all, I’d like to think I have enough sense to realize that just being good at one thing doesn’t mean being good at something else ,to know to quit while I’m ahead and when to stay in my lane. Being humiliated in one fight after over a year of training and delays would’ve been enough for me, never mind training for another two years and getting my ass kicked again.

One of the narratives I’ve heard since Saturday is how much Punk had improved in the two years since his last fight. True, he actually managed to last three rounds instead of getting choked out in the first one, but ‘vast improvement’ only applies if your bar of expectation is set extremely low.

Let’s look at the stats between Punk’s first fight and his second one:

Fight #1: The stats aren’t pretty. Punk got one shot in and it wasn’t a good one. His opponent, on the other hand, basically used him as a punching bag before choking Punk out.

Fight #2: Admittedly, Punk did do better than last time on the surface, but it doesn’t take much digging or math skills to see big problems.

Striking:  This is the biggest, glaring problem. Punk got in 81 strikes, which doesn’t sound bad compared to Jackson’s 95, but of the 63 strikes to the head and upper torso, only 10 of them were power strikes, meaning they were hard hits. That’s is an abysmal 15%.

He did a little better in shots to the torso: 7 out of 13 body strikes were power hits, about 53%. His strikes to the legs were 2 out of 5 or, roughly, 40%.

Grappling: There’s no nice way to put this: For a man who used to make a good living as a wrestler, Punk’s grappling leaves a lot to be desired. Of 9 takedown attempts, he only got 1, which amounts to 11.1%.

Now, let’s compare that to his opponents.

Mickey Gall: Safe to say that Punk was basically Gall’s punching bag for his first fight. Gall had 32 strikes and 20 of them, 62.5%, landed on CM Punk’s noggin.

Mike Jackson: Mike Jackson, unfortunately for him, didn’t put Punk away immediately, but his stats are pretty impressive. Of 95 strikes to the head, 54 were power strikes, which is about 56%. He landed 10 power strikes out of 12, or about 83% of his body strikes, but no power strikes to the legs. In grappling, Jackson only made one attempt to Punk’s 9, but he was successful.

Scoring: Due to Punk being choked out, no scoring is available for his first fight, but the scoring for his second fight was actually quite close. Jackson got a score of 30 from three of the four judges, while Punk got 26 from the same three judges.

Not very good, is it? The second fight may have been seen as  a vast improvement because Punk lasted longer than two minutes, but it was a mediocre fight at best. Punk was out classed in every respect, just like last time

Now, lest the Punk defenders write this off as a hater throwing shade, I would like to point out that several sports sites that cover MMA have been even more critical than I am. ESPN (who just signed a deal with UFC), and Bleacher Reports referred to the bout as ’embarrassing’ and Twitter’s Trending Topics said Punk was ‘Crushed’ by Jackson.

I realize that the Punk supporters want to make this about chasing your dreams and taking chances, but that argument was ridiculous in 2016 and laughable now. Let’s be honest with ourselves: Punk had no business being on a UFC card in 2016 or 2018. It’s time to stop pretending otherwise.

Punk vs Gall Stats

Punk vs Jackson Stats