Part of the reason I enjoy watching UFC is it allows us to witness combat sports evolve, which styles/techniques are doing well and what kind of counters tend to be most effective. While a lot has changed over the past decade or two, I have noticed that there has not been much innovation in how deception is used. As I see it, deception is a critical tool for the martial arts. I won't go into all its benefits, but its fairly axiomatic that deception creates opportunities that can then be exploited with technique or power.
Yet as it stands, my assessment of deception in the UFC is heavily skewed towards feints. It's a universal part of the MMA toolkit to probe the opponent's defenses and see how the respond and/or program a response. But even here, I would argue there are levels. There doesn't seem to be a UFC analog of the Muay Thai fighter Saenchai who actually uses misdirection which borders on optical illusion.
In an even more dramatic application of deception, I have only seen a few faked 'dazes' or 'disorientations' whereby the fighter acts like he/she has been significantly affected by a strike but is actually planning a surprise ambush should the opponent re-enter the pocket. Note: I'm not advocating faking eye injuries or other antics to appeal to ref intervention. Though just a handful, I was still surprised that this kind of tactic hasn't caught on. In Verdum versus Emelianenko, Verdum would likely have never landed that arm-bar on Emelianenko had it not been for his faking pain to get Emelianenko to enter his guard. This video shows a few other successful feigns, but note how rare they are:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0SfQHXLr_8
Question
Why hasn't deception been studied and applied more broadly in MMA beyond just feinting?
**Tagging ninjitsu since there is not deception tag.