Whose Finishing Move Is the Most Effective, Sass, McKenzie or Palhares?

The Sassangle, the McKenzitine and the Rousimar heel hook are three of the most well known finishing moves for Paul Sass, Cody McKenzie and Rousimar Palhares.

Paul Sass' go-to move is a triangle choke, Cody McKenzie's is a guillotine choke and Rousimar Palhares' is a heel hook.

When you go out there to fight any of these guys, you know what they'll be looking for but it still can't be stopped.

But whose finishing move is the most effective?

Paul Sass

Paul Sass is a lightweight fighter with an undefeated professional record of 13-0.

Sass' go-to move is a triangle choke, a move he has executed nine times in the cage. That gives him a triangle finish percentage of nearly 70 percent.

In the UFC, he has scored two triangles over Mark Holst and Jacob Volkmann. Both of those earned him Submission of the Night honors.

Cody McKenzie

Cody McKenzie a lightweight and Ultimate Fighter alum, who is 13-2 in his career.

McKenzie has scored 11 of his 13 professional wins by guillotine choke. In addition, McKenzie scored two more guillotine choke wins during his time on The Ultimate Fighter.

He also won ten straight fights by guillotine choke at one point.

He pulled off two while officially in the UFC, earning one Submission of the Night award.

Rousimar Palhares

Rousimar Palhares is a middleweight who is 14-4 in his MMA career and 7-3 in the UFC.

Palhares is a leg-lock wizard, but his go-to leg-lock is a heel hook. Palhares has won six of his fights with heel hooks and one more fight with a knee bar.

Palhares has scored three heel hook wins in the UFC, and the lone kneebar was also in the UFC.

In his last fight, when he found himself unable to secure a leg-lock on Alan Belcher, he ended up losing via TKO.

Who Wins?

Looking at number of victories by finishing move, Cody McKenzie takes the cake. He has the most total victories by his move, and he has the most in a row.

McKenzie and Sass both do have the same number of victories, and the same number of victories with their finishing move in the Octagon.

Unfortunately, Palhares isn't even close. He has less victories than McKenzie and Sass, and in his last fight it was shown that his leg locks are totally avoidable on the ground, as Alan Belcher was in danger for a while but managed to escape.

With that in mind, it could go either way between Sass and McKenzie, and I'm going with Paul Sass as having the most effective finishing move.

For McKenzie, both of his guillotine victims in the UFC had been submitted in the past, and on more than one occasion.

In Sass' last fight he submitted Jacob Volkmann, a fighter who had only been submitted one other time in 16 previous fights. His other triangle choke victory was the lone submission loss that Mark Holst has suffered.

Tim McTiernan is a Featured Columnist for Bleacher Report. For the latest news on everything MMA, follow him on Twitter @TimMcTiernan.