By The Numbers: UFC 261

Kamaru Usman made sure there would be no excuses this time around.

Usman closed the book on his rivalry with Jorge Masvidal in the UFC 261 headliner, knocking out his opponent 62 seconds into Round 2 of their rematch at Vystar Veterans Memorial Arena in Jacksonville, Florida on Saturday night. “The Nigerian Nightmare” continues to make his case to be included in the discussion as one of the sport’s pound-for-pound greats, and his welterweight dominance is approaching Georges St. Pierre territory. Those discussions are for another time. For now, here is a by-the-numbers look at UFC 261, with statistics courtesy of UFCStats.com.

15:39: Total time of the three championship fights at the top of the UFC 261 bill. That’s the least amount of time for a trio of title bouts with 75-minute potential in promotion history. The second shortest was UFC 217, which went a total of 25:07 for an event that featured Georges St. Pierre vs. Michael Bisping, T.J. Dillashaw vs. Cody Garbrandt and Rose Namajunas vs. Joanna Jedrzejczyk.

14: Consecutive victories for Usman, the second-longest winning streak in UFC history. Only former middleweight champion Anderson Silva (16) has won more.

31: Significant strikes landed by Masvidal. Usman, meanwhile, landed 21 significant strikes and most importantly, the lone knockdown of the fight.

5: Knockdowns landed by Usman in his last four UFC appearances. The welterweight champion had just three knockdowns in his first 10 bouts with the promotion.

1: Woman in UFC history to regain her title. Rose Namajunas, who initially won the 115-pound belt in November 2017, recaptured the throne with a first-round knockout of Weili Zhang in Saturday’s co-main event. Previous attempts by Ronda Rousey, Holly Holm and Joanna Jedrzejczyk to regain UFC championships were all unsuccessful.

5: Finishes in UFC competition for Namajunas, the most of anyone in the strawweight division. 1:18: Time of Namajunas’ stoppage win, making it the third-fastest knockout in UFC strawweight history behind Poliana Botelho’s 33-second finish of Syuri Kondo at UFC Fight Night 129 and Zhang’s 42-second KO of Jessica Andrade at UFC Fight Night 157.

6: Victories in title fights for Valentina Shevchenko, who dominated Jessica Andrade en route to a second-round TKO in their flyweight title bout at UFC 261. That ties her with Stipe Miocic and Joanna Jedrzejczyk for fourth most among active fighters in the promotion. Only Jone Jones (14), Amanda Nunes (nine) and Jose Aldo (eight) have more.

7: Takedowns landed by Shevchenko in seven attempts, tying a single fight record for the women’s flyweight division.

2: Finishes from the crucifix position by Shevchenko, making her the first woman to have two such stoppages in UFC history. In addition to Andrade, “Bullet” also battered Katlyn Chookagian from the crucifix position in a February 2020 bout.

43: Total strikes by which Shevchenko outlanded Andrade. She also held a 32-to-10 advantage in significant strikes landed.

3,865: Days since the first fight between Chris Weidman and Uriah Hall, a first-round TKO triumph for “The All-American” at Ring of Combat 31 on Sept. 24, 2010. The rematch ended in just 17 seconds, when Weidman’s leg snapped after landing the first kick of the fight.

1: Significant strike landed by Weidman. It was also the only strike landed or attempted by both fighters in the bout.

6: Finishes for Anthony Smith since 2018, the most of anyone in the UFC light heavyweight division during that period. “Lionheart” rendered Jimmy Crute unable to continue with a leg kick after one round in a featured matchup on Saturday.

12: Unofficial media scorecards, of the 18 tracked by MMADecisions.com, that scored the welterweight bout between Dwight Grant and Stefan Sekulic in favor of Sekulic. However, judges Chris Lee and Howard Reichbach submitted 29-28 tallies for Grant, allowing him to take home a split-decision triumph.

156: Significant strikes attempted by Grant, more than three times that of Sekulic (52). Grant was not particularly accurate, landing just 49 attempts for a 31 percent success rate. Sekulic landed 33 of 52 attempts — a 63 percent clip.

9: Fighters in UFC history to win via ankle lock submission after Brendan Allen accomplished the feat in a win over Karl Roberson in a preliminary middleweight affair. The others: Don Frye, Oleg Taktarov, Marcus Davis, Roman Mitichyan, Andrei Arlovski, Kurt Pellegrino, Manny Gamburyan and Thiago Moises.

4: Submission losses in UFC competition for Roberson, which accounts for all of the Glory Kickboxing veteran’s defeats in the Octagon. In addition to Allen, “Baby K” has suffered submission losses to Marvin Vettori, Glover Teixeira and Cezar Ferreira.

9:58: Total control time for Pat Sabatini in a unanimous decision win against Tristan Connelly at featherweight. The former Cage Fury Fighting Championships king was able to secure more than four minutes of control in both the first and second rounds before slowing somewhat in the final frame.

96: Significant strikes landed by Rodrigo Vargas in a three-round verdict over Zhu Rong at lightweight. Vargas distributed his offense well, landing 50 to the head, 29 to the body and 17 to the legs. By comparison, Rong landed just 42 signficant strikes, 40 of which were to the head of his opponent.

189: Significant strikes landed by Jeff Molina in a unanimous decision triumph over Qileng Aori at flyweight. That’s a single-fight UFC record for the 125-pound weight class. Deiveson Figueiredo held the previous best, landing 137 significant strikes against Brandon Moreno at UFC 256 in December 2020. Aori landed 116 significant strikes in defeat.

127: Significant strikes landed by Molina in Round 3. That’s the third-most significant strikes landed in a single round by a fighter in any weight class in UFC competition Max Holloway set the record earlier this year by landing 141 significant strikes in the fourth round of a win over Calvin Kattar at UFC on ABC 1. By comparison, Aori landed 57 significant strikes in Round 3.

2: Knockdowns landed by Molina in the second round, when momentum of the fight began to shift.