Liu earned a score of 15.300, narrowly edging out teammate Zou Jingyuan, who scored 15.233. Greece's Eleftherios Petrounias took the bronze with a 15.100.
This victory marks Liu's second consecutive gold in the still rings, having previously won at Tokyo 2020. No man has defended the Olympic title in this event since Japan's Nakayama Akinori won in 1968 and 1972. Petrounias was the champion at Rio 2016.
In the final, Liu finished ahead of Zou, despite both having matching difficulty scores of 6.4. The deciding factor was their dismounts—Zou had to make several minor adjustments to control his double-double dismount, while Liu only took a small hop forward on his landing.