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5 David Taylor and Abdulrashid Sadulaev Statistics

Valuable info ahead of tomorrow's super match.

Welcome to Mat Stats! Wrestling statistics are woefully unavailable and I want to change that. Often the numbers are out there, but are tucked away in obscure corners of the internet and exist merely as raw data. My goal is to try to compile what I can find and output a newsletter that will highlight the most interesting findings. Each newsletter will cover wrestling statistics from a particular event, time frame, athlete, or team. If you like this kind of analysis, please consider subscribing to get each new edition delivered straight to your mailbox.

Sadulaev has more accomplishments, Taylor has been more dominant.

Over their senior level freestyle careers, David Taylor has a record of 158-21, while Sadulaev racked up 154 wins and only 3 losses. Sadulaev has 7 World/Olympic golds with 8 total medals, beating out Taylor’s 4 golds and 5 medals. Sadulaev also has the longest win streak of 75 matches, beating Taylor’s streak of 57 matches. However, Taylor has been a more dominant force, earning 61 technical superiorities and a staggering 29 falls, compared to Sadulaev’s 65 technical superiorities and only 6 falls.

Taylor has scored a lot more points than Sadulaev since Tokyo.

Looking at the data since the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, Taylor has outscored Sadulaev in every technique except for activity time, step outs, standing cautions, suplex’s, and counter takedowns. The chart below compares their technical scoring quantified in points per minute for each technique. Of note, Taylor has scored leg attack points at a rate of almost 5 times that of Sadulaev.

Taylor has a higher Most Successful Wrestler (MSW) index than Sadulaev since the Tokyo Olympics.

If you aren’t familiar, MSW index is a metric used by UWW to quantify wrestler performance at championship events. The equation accounts for match points won per minute, match points lost per minute, classification points won per match, and classification points lost per match. Tallying the World and Olympic Championships since 2021, Taylor comes out with an MSW index of 5.64, while Sadulaev has a combined MSW of 3.35. Looking at peak performance in that timeframe, Taylor had a 6.66 in 2023, Sadulaev had a 4.91 in 2021.

Sadulaev has a better career scoring ratio, but it’s been dropping recently.

Over his career, Sadulaev has outscored opponents 313-39 in World/Olympic championships, while Taylor has outscored opponents 192-32. Sadulaev’s peak for/against ratio of 28:1 was in 2016, while Taylor had a blistering 40:1 ratio in 2022. In 2023, Sadulaev posted a 1:1 ratio in his rare DNP performance.

Both wrestlers have insane hit lists.

Over the course of his career, Abdulrashid has logged wins over 24 World/Olympic medalists, including 4 champions. Taylor has taken out 22 World/Olympic medalists, including 5 champions.