Key takeaways
Leon Edwards beat Colby Covington by unanimous decision after five rounds in the main event of UFC 296 at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. The co-main event also went to the scorecards: Alexandre Pantoja beat Brandon Royval, the division's No. 4, after five rounds at flyweight.
Across the twelve bouts that produced a result, four ended by knockout, three by submission and five on the judges' scorecards — seven stoppages in twelve fights. Every decision was unanimous: not one result divided the judges.
The quickest finish belonged to Josh Emmett, who stopped Bryce Mitchell at 1:57 of round one, and three of the seven finishes came inside the opening round. The longest was Shavkat Rakhmonov's submission of Stephen Thompson, 9 minutes and 56 seconds in. End to end, the twelve fights filled two hours and 16 minutes of cage time.
The preliminary card out-finished the main card: five of its seven results came early, against two of the five above it. Cody Garbrandt (knockout, round one), Ariane da Silva (submission, round two) and Tagir Ulanbekov (submission, round two) all closed before the judges were needed.
Nine ranked fighters appeared, and three of them were in the top two bouts.
Nine weight classes were used, welterweight most often with two bouts.
