Whew. That was pretty crazy. I feel like everyone says this after every big UFC card, but 24 hours later I’m still perfectly comfortable describing UFC 189 as a true classic.
After a fairly slow preliminary slate, things kicked into high gear. The top headline is certainly Conor McGregor’s stirring knockout of Chad Mendes to win the interim featherweight title. A star-making turn, no doubt.
But the best fight of the evening happened in the co-main event, when Robbie Lawler and Rory MacDonald beat on each other with meteoric levels of skill and violence. Finally, a bloodied Lawler finished a very bloody, very hurt and very tough MacDonald with a TKO in the fifth and final round.
And the greatness didn’t end there. It was a night of elite action and genuine emotion.
Now that we’ve all had a day to process what we saw, what are some key stats and figures that best illustrate what happened? In our new Data Dump series, we’re going to do just that. Get ready to crunch some numbers. Well, you just have to read. They’ve already been crunched. Whatever, you knew what I meant.