The round-by-round of August 4, 2018 is the most important document in this file. Jackson landed 42 of 94 significant strikes to Simón's 25 of 53. In Round 3 he landed 22 of 31 at 70% accuracy while Simón managed 3 of 9 — and lost that round on two of three cards, because Simón scored four takedowns and 3:20 of control in it. Across the fight Simón went 7 for 20 on his entries, 35% accuracy, and banked 5:35 of control. Two judges scored it 30-27 Simón; the third had 29-28. That is the cleanest possible statement of the risk in this rematch: out-landing Ricky Simón does not, by itself, beat Ricky Simón. The counterweight is context. That was a 26-year-old with six professional fights making his Octagon debut, against a man in his third UFC bout. Jackson has since added ten UFC fights, a 61%-accurate takedown game of his own, and the divisional knockdown record. Eight years is a long time to hold a result.
Raoni Barcelos headlines this card, and he beat both of these men inside six months. Jackson lost a split decision on April 25, 2026 — 29-28, 28-29, 29-28 — after dropping Barcelos in Round 1 with a high kick and nearly finishing him, then conceding six takedowns and 7:45 of control, being fully mounted with under a minute left in Round 2 and surviving a rear-naked choke. Simón lost unanimously on November 8, 2025, 29-28 across the board, with no knockdown and not a single card won. Two facts fall out of that comparison. Jackson performed measurably better against the common opponent — a split he arguably won, with a knockdown, versus a clean sweep. And, less comfortably, the exact skillset that just beat him is the one Simón owns more of than Barcelos does: Barcelos averages nothing close to 4.49 takedowns per fifteen minutes. That tape is simultaneously the strongest argument for Jackson and the strongest argument for Simón.
The two takedown-accuracy figures had to be reconstructed because UFC.com's landed-and-attempted block is broken for both men, and the reconstruction is the most counterintuitive thing in the matchup. Simón lands twice as many takedowns as Jackson — 53 to 25 — off three and a half times as many attempts, 142 to 41. That inversion is the fight's hidden cost structure: 101 of Simón's 142 career entries failed, and every failure against a 75.5-inch southpaw with a 1.36 knockdown rate is a live counter window. Over fifteen minutes he will likely attempt twelve to sixteen entries, and the projection is largely a question of how many of those Jackson gets to counter. Layer that onto the absorption curves and the picture closes: by Round 3, opponents land 25.5 significant strikes on Simón and 4.5 on Jackson, a factor of 5.7. Add the Song Yadong stoppage at 1:10 of the fifth and the Yanez knockdown in the closing seconds of the third five months ago, and the late-knockout branch stops being a tail risk and becomes a structural feature of the projection.
