Sherdog Fighter Record Extraction

Purpose

Given a fighter reference (canonical Sherdog profile URL, fighter name, or name + disambiguator), return the fighter's profile metadata and full professional bout record as structured JSON. Profile fields include name, nickname, date of birth, age, nationality, height (imperial + metric), weight (imperial + metric), weight class, association/team, head coach (when surfaced — usually not), pro debut date, and the win/loss/draw + no-contest record broken down by KO/TKO, submission, decision, and "other" finishes. Each bout returns chronological bout number, result, opponent + Sherdog URL, event + Sherdog URL, event date (ISO 8601), method of finish (with detail in parens — finish type for SUB/TKO, voting kind for DEC), round, round time (mm:ss), referee (when listed), and notes. An optional include_amateur flag pulls the amateur bout table; an optional include_location flag fetches each event page to add per-bout venue/city/country. Read-only — never click Sign In, Edit, or any mutation control; never submit a form.

When to Use

• "Get every pro fight on Sherdog for {fighter}" — analytics, fight history charts, betting prep, fan apps.
• Building a structured opponent-history index — opponent URLs in the response are clickable Sherdog profile slugs, so the same skill is the building block for graph crawls.
• Comparing two fighters' records (pull twice, diff client-side).
• Periodic monitoring for a new fight added to a fighter's record (the table is newest-first, so a length increase or row[0] change signals an update).
• Not for live odds, real-time fight-night results, or fighter ranking timelines — Sherdog updates lag the broadcast and rankings are not on the profile page.

Workflow

Lead with plain HTTP. Sherdog is fronted by Cloudflare but does not serve a bot challenge to the Browserbase Fetch API for /fighter/*, /events/*, or /stats/fightfinder paths — verified across Jon Jones (107 KB / 200 OK), Conor McGregor (110 KB / 200 OK), and Khabib Nurmagomedov (105 KB / 200 OK), all returning a fully-rendered HTML document with itemprop=... microdata intact. No browser session, no --proxies, no --verified required. Reserve a remote browser session for the rare Cloudflare-challenge fallback at the end of this section.

1. Resolve the fighter reference to a canonical URL

The skill is anchored on the canonical profile URL pattern:

https://www.sherdog.com/fighter/<Name-Slug>-<NumericId>

2. Fetch the profile HTML

bb fetch "https://www.sherdog.com/fighter/<Name-Slug>-<id>" --output /tmp/profile.html

Response is ~100–115 KB of HTML. The relevant blocks are all inline — no XHR, no JS hydration required.

3. Parse profile metadata

All profile fields live inside a single <div class="module bio_fighter vcard"> block decorated with Schema.org microdata. Use these stable extraction targets:

4. Parse the win/loss method breakdown

Inside <div class="winsloses-holder"> there are two columns: .wins and .loses, each followed by four <div class="meter"> blocks in fixed order — KO/TKO, SUBMISSIONS, DECISIONS, OTHERS. The integer count is in <div class="pl">N</div>. After the .loses column an optional <div class="winloses nc"> block carries the No-Contest count.

.winsloses-holder
  .wins
    .winloses.win  -> <span>Wins</span> <span>{wins}</span>
    .meter-title "KO / TKO"   .meter > .pl -> {wins_by.ko_tko}
    .meter-title "SUBMISSIONS" .meter > .pl -> {wins_by.submission}
    .meter-title "DECISIONS"   .meter > .pl -> {wins_by.decision}
    .meter-title "OTHERS"      .meter > .pl -> {wins_by.other}
  .loses
    .winloses.lose -> <span>Losses</span> <span>{losses}</span>
    [same 4 meter blocks for losses_by.*]
    .winloses.nc   -> <span>N/C</span> <span>{no_contests}</span>   (optional)

Draws are present in totals (sometimes shown as <div class="winloses draw">) but Sherdog does NOT break draws down by method. Emit draws_by as null or omit.

5. Parse the fight history table(s)

A profile may contain one to three <table class="new_table fighter"> tables. Each is preceded by a <div class="slanted_title"><div>FIGHT HISTORY - {KIND}</div> where {KIND} ∈ PRO, PRO EXHIBITION, AMATEUR. Always walk every such table and bucket rows by the preceding title — never trust position alone, because newer profiles may add tables and older ones omit some.

Row schema (six <td>s in fixed order):

Per-row derived fields:

• event_date — Sherdog's format is Mon / DD / YYYY (e.g. Nov / 16 / 2024). Parse to ISO YYYY-MM-DD. Note the spaces around the /.
• method_category — substring match on the <b> text before the first (:
  • "TKO" → tko
  • "KO" (and not preceded by "T") → ko
  • "Submission" → submission
  • "Decision (Unanimous)" → decision_unanimous
  • "Decision (Split)" → decision_split
  • "Decision (Majority)" → decision_majority
  • "Decision" (no parens) → decision
  • "DQ", "NC", "No Contest", "Draw", "Could Not Continue", "Overturned" → other
• method_detail — the parenthesized text after the category: TKO (Spinning Back Kick and Punches) → "Spinning Back Kick and Punches"; Submission (Rear-Naked Choke) → "Rear-Naked Choke". null for plain Decision (Unanimous) style (the kind is already in method_category).
• referee — the <span class="sub_line"> content under winby, stripped of the trailing <br /><a class="pbp_btn"> link. May be <a href="/referee/...">Name</a> or plain text or empty.
• bout_number — assign by reversing the parsed rows: oldest row = bout 1, newest row = bout N. Total N must equal wins + losses + draws + no_contests from step 4. Mismatch is a parser bug, not a fighter anomaly — surface it.

6. (Optional) include_amateur

Set include_amateur=true → also parse the FIGHT HISTORY - AMATEUR table when present. Emit amateur_fights: [] when the flag is on but no amateur table is rendered, or null when the flag is off.

Treat FIGHT HISTORY - PRO EXHIBITION as a separate bucket — these are sanctioned non-MMA bouts (e.g. McGregor vs Mayweather boxing) and should NOT be merged into fights[]. Emit as fights_exhibition[] when the user asked for the full picture, otherwise omit.

7. (Optional) include_location

The profile fight row does not include venue or city. Each event page does — fetch https://www.sherdog.com/events/<event-slug>-<id> and read:

• Venue + city + country: <span itemprop="location">Madison Square Garden, New York, New York, United States</span>
• Canonical event date with timezone: <meta itemprop="startDate" content="2024-11-16T00:00:00+00:00">

Dedupe event URLs across bouts before fetching — fighters often appear at the same event multiple times (rare, but happens for tournament cards). Throttle to ≤2 sustained req/s; parallelize up to ~5 concurrent. Cache by event URL across runs; event metadata is immutable once an event has occurred.

8. Read-only enforcement

The profile page renders no booking, no purchase, no destructive control — but it does render a "Sign In" link and an admin-only "Edit" button for some sessions. Never click either. The skill is a pure parse of GET responses.

Browser fallback (rare)

If bb fetch returns a Cloudflare challenge HTML (<title>Just a moment...</title> or status 403/503 with cf-mitigated: challenge) on Sherdog — empirically not observed across 4 fighters in 2026-05-18 testing, but possible on bursty load — fall back to a remote Browserbase session with the cookie context primed:

SID=$(bb sessions create --keep-alive --proxies | python3 -c 'import json,sys; print(json.load(sys.stdin)["id"])')
browse --connect "$SID" open "https://www.sherdog.com/fighter/<Name-Slug>-<id>"
browse --connect "$SID" wait load
browse --connect "$SID" wait timeout 2000
browse --connect "$SID" get html body > /tmp/profile.html
bb sessions update "$SID" --status REQUEST_RELEASE

Then run the same step-3 → step-5 HTML parsers against /tmp/profile.html. --verified is not needed; --proxies is sufficient if the bare bb fetch is ever rate-limited.

Site-Specific Gotchas

• bb fetch works without proxy or Verified. Sherdog's Cloudflare config allows the Browserbase Fetch API to retrieve full HTML directly. Don't burn budget on --proxies or remote sessions unless a challenge actually appears. Confirmed 200 + microdata-intact across Jon Jones / Conor McGregor / Khabib Nurmagomedov on 2026-05-18.
• Cloudflare robots.txt explicitly disallows AI bots (Amazonbot, ClaudeBot, GPTBot, CCBot, etc., as listed in /robots.txt). Honor those user-agents in your client identity; bb fetch uses a neutral Browserbase UA that is allowed by the catch-all User-agent: * Allow: / rule. Do not spoof User-Agent: ClaudeBot or similar.
• Profile name contains the nickname as quoted segment. <meta itemprop="name" content='Jon "Bones" Jones' /> — the attribute uses single quotes so the embedded double-quoted nickname parses cleanly in HTML, but a naïve content="..." regex will fail. Use content='([^']+)' or DOM parse.
• weight_class and weight are different fields. weight is the listed walk-weight, often above the class cap (Jon Jones: weight 238 lbs / class Heavyweight; Khabib: weight 155 lbs / class Lightweight). Do not conflate them.
• head_coach is not on the profile page. Sherdog only surfaces association/team, not coach. Return null. Following the association link to its roster page still does not label any member as head coach. Don't fabricate a coach name from external sources.
• Pro debut is derived, not labeled. There is no <*>Pro Debut</*> element. Take the date from the last (oldest) row in FIGHT HISTORY - PRO. For amateur-only fighters or fighters with zero pro fights, pro_debut is null.
• Fight tables are newest-first. The first row of class="new_table fighter" is the most recent bout; the last is the debut. Reverse the parsed rows when assigning bout_number (oldest=1).
• Three table types share the same class. A profile can render up to three <table class="new_table fighter"> tables — PRO, PRO EXHIBITION, AMATEUR — each preceded by a distinct <div class="slanted_title">. Always read the preceding title to bucket rows. Older fighters often have only PRO; McGregor and several boxers also have PRO EXHIBITION; amateur-only fighters may render only AMATEUR.
• <span itemprop="award"> on event anchors is inconsistent. Present on sanctioned/notable events, absent on smaller cards. Strip the wrapper when extracting event name; absence is not an error.
• Method strings have variable parenthetical detail. TKO (Punches), TKO (Spinning Back Kick and Punches), Submission (Rear-Naked Choke), Decision (Unanimous), Decision (Split), Decision (Majority), DQ, NC (Accidental Foul), Could Not Continue, Overturned, Draw, Draw (Majority). Parse defensively — your enum must accept anything before the first ( as the category, the parenthetical as the detail (nullable), and have a sane other bucket.
• Referee in sub_line is optional. Old / regional bouts often render an empty <span class="sub_line"></span> followed only by the play-by-play link. Treat empty referee as null, not a parser failure.
• Round time is already mm:ss. No need to normalize zero-padding (5:00, 0:48 both observed). For decisions, time is the round-length cap (5:00 for championship rounds, 3:00 for non-championship 3rd round in some rules sets) — interpret accordingly if you derive total bout time.
• KO vs TKO regex order matters. "TKO".startswith("KO") is False but "KO".startswith("KO") is True — match TKO first, then KO, never reverse the order.
• No-Contest count lives outside the wins/losses columns. .winloses.nc is appended after .loses, not inside either column. A fighter with no NCs simply does not have this div.
• Draws are not broken down by method. Sherdog displays total draws but not draw-method counts. Do not invent a draws_by breakdown.
• fights[] length must equal record total. len(fights) == wins + losses + draws + no_contests. If they disagree (rare — caused by a partial HTML chunk or a fight that's currently in dispute and shows in the row count but not the totals), surface the mismatch in error_reasoning but still emit the parsed rows.
• Fight Finder search is alphabetical, not relevance-ranked. /stats/fightfinder?SearchTxt=Jon+Jones returns 20 results per page sorted by first-name alphabetically (A.J. → Aaron → Abe → Adam → … → Jon → …). Jon Jones the UFC legend is past page 1 of a common-surname query. Prefer canonical URLs whenever the caller has one. For name-only input, narrow with weightclass= and/or association= before paginating. The search also matches association names (e.g. searching McGregor returns fighters whose team contains "McGregor"), which adds noise.
• No relevance-ranked search endpoint exists publicly. There is no /autocomplete, no /search/results?query=… (that path 404s), no JSON suggest API on www.sherdog.com — verified. Don't waste turns probing for one.
• Per-bout location requires a second fetch per event. The profile row carries event name + date but not venue/city. To populate bout.location, fetch each event page and read <span itemprop="location">. Dedupe by event URL; throttle to ≤2 req/s sustained. Default the contract to location=null per bout unless the caller opts in with include_location=true.
• HTML is gzipped over the wire — bb fetch handles decompression transparently. If you switch to raw curl, send Accept-Encoding: gzip and decompress, or you'll get binary garbage.
• No GraphQL, no JSON API. All data is in the rendered HTML. Don't burn time looking for /api/, /_next/data/, or /v1/fighters/ — none exist.
• Cloudflare cookie __cf_bm is set on the first response and persists for 30 min. bb fetch handles this transparently per-request; if you spin up a session for the rare challenge fallback, the same cookie is set once on the first browse open and reused on subsequent navigations within that session.
• Read-only. The profile has no booking or purchase controls, but it does render Sign In and (for some sessions) an Edit button. Never click them. The skill is GET-only.

Expected Output

Single canonical output shape; populate amateur_fights / fights_exhibition only when the corresponding flag/table is present, populate per-bout location only when include_location=true.

{
  "success": true,
  "profile": {
    "sherdog_id": 27944,
    "url": "https://www.sherdog.com/fighter/Jon-Jones-27944",
    "name": "Jon Jones",
    "nickname": "Bones",
    "date_of_birth": "1987-07-19",
    "age": 38,
    "nationality": "United States",
    "birthplace": "Rochester, New York",
    "height_imperial": "6'4\"",
    "height_cm": 193.04,
    "weight_imperial": "238 lbs",
    "weight_kg": 107.95,
    "weight_class": "Heavyweight",
    "association": "Jackson-Wink MMA",
    "head_coach": null,
    "pro_debut": "2008-04-12",
    "record": {
      "wins": 28,
      "losses": 1,
      "draws": 0,
      "no_contests": 1,
      "wins_by":   { "ko_tko": 11, "submission": 7, "decision": 10, "other": 0 },
      "losses_by": { "ko_tko": 0,  "submission": 0, "decision": 0,  "other": 1 }
    }
  },
  "fights": [
    {
      "bout_number": 30,
      "result": "win",
      "opponent": {
        "name": "Stipe Miocic",
        "url": "https://www.sherdog.com/fighter/Stipe-Miocic-39537"
      },
      "event": {
        "name": "UFC 309 - Jones vs. Miocic",
        "url": "https://www.sherdog.com/events/UFC-309-Jones-vs-Miocic-103896",
        "date": "2024-11-16",
        "location": null
      },
      "method": "TKO (Spinning Back Kick and Punches)",
      "method_category": "tko",
      "method_detail": "Spinning Back Kick and Punches",
      "round": 3,
      "round_time": "4:29",
      "referee": "Herb Dean",
      "notes": null
    },
    {
      "bout_number": 1,
      "result": "win",
      "opponent": {
        "name": "Brad Bernard",
        "url": "https://www.sherdog.com/fighter/Brad-Bernard-27140"
      },
      "event": {
        "name": "FFP - Untamed 20",
        "url": "https://www.sherdog.com/events/FFP-Untamed-20-7175",
        "date": "2008-04-12",
        "location": null
      },
      "method": "TKO (Punches)",
      "method_category": "tko",
      "method_detail": "Punches",
      "round": 1,
      "round_time": "1:32",
      "referee": null,
      "notes": null
    }
  ],
  "fights_exhibition": null,
  "amateur_fights": null,
  "error_reasoning": null
}

Failure shapes:

// Fighter slug 404 (Sherdog 200s with a "Page Not Found" body — sniff the <title>)
{ "success": false, "error_reasoning": "fighter_not_found", "input": "https://www.sherdog.com/fighter/Jon-Jonez-27944", "fights": [], "profile": null }

// Cloudflare challenge or non-200 status on profile fetch (rare)
{ "success": false, "error_reasoning": "cloudflare_challenge", "status_code": 403, "profile": null, "fights": [] }

// Name-only input with multiple plausible matches and no narrowing params
{ "success": false, "error_reasoning": "ambiguous_name", "query": "Jon Jones",
  "matches": [
    { "name": "Jon Jones", "sherdog_id": 27944, "url": "...", "nickname": "Bones", "weight_class": "Heavyweight", "association": "Jackson-Wink MMA" },
    { "name": "Jon Jones", "sherdog_id": 12345, "url": "...", "nickname": null,    "weight_class": "Welterweight", "association": null }
  ],
  "profile": null, "fights": []
}

// Parser ran but row count != record total — emit what we have plus the diagnostic
{ "success": true, "profile": {...}, "fights": [...23 rows...],
  "error_reasoning": "row_count_mismatch: fights[].length=23 but record total=24" }