Everything is coming out a day late due to my lab report for class taking forever, but this weekend's card doesn't have much to talk about, so the extra day won't hurt as much. This past weekend was UFC 271 and the main event was a rematch between current champion Israel Adesanya and former champion Robert Whittaker. Their first fight saw Adesanya drop Whittaker at the end of the first round and finish him early on in the second. The second fight was a much different contest with Whittaker going the distance and causing a much more competitive contest to take place. It was a really close fight with two judges scoring it 48-47 for Adesanya. I finally came up with a reason to talk about someone first or last in these. After a fight, the winner always gets the in cage interview first and if they talk to the loser, he goes second, so that's how I'm going to run these from now on.
First, I want to go over Israel Adesanya's performance in this fight. Izzy did much of what I expected him to do and outlined in my preview for this fight. He kept the fight at range as much as he could and used his significant reach advantage to land more strikes than Whittaker could. For the 3rd or 4th fight in a row now, his leg kicks were his best method of offense. His ability to counter was on display early and I think after the first round, it caused Whittaker to be even more cautious than he intended to be. His counter striking deterred Whittaker from throwing his right hand for long stretches of the fight and that was a huge reason he was able to get the win. Israel was taken down more than I expected as he hit the canvas quite a few times in this one. Fortunately for him, he was able to work his way back to his feet rather quickly each time without taking much if any damage. I'm by no means a BJJ black belt, but I did notice that he would give Whittaker an opportunity to take his back whenever he was getting back up and they mentioned it during the broadcast. Whittaker wasn't a natural or advanced enough grappler to take advantage of it, but that is something Izzy needs to clean up before he faces an opponent who may be able to. While Izzy was still very good and I agree with the decision that he won the fight, there's something I want to talk about with him. Izzy was the hottest fighter in the UFC at one time. He was the biggest star they had who competes consistently after the Paulo Costa fight. I don't really know what happened, but he hasn't put on a really great performance since. I won't hold the Jan Blachowicz fight against him since it was up a weight class and against a fighter who had a very particular skill set that posed him problems. Not every fight can be a master class and to expect such is asking too much of any fighter or any individual in any profession. However, his last two fights have just seemed so uninspired. He really hasn't pressed the issue or tried to impose his will against Vettori or Whittaker. Now, I'm not saying I expect the more sophisticated striker to go into a fight and just throw caution to the wind and fight like Tai Tuivasa, but a sense of urgency would be nice. In the Vettori fight, it quickly became apparent that Izzy couldn't lose that fight outside of some freak injury or getting caught with a strike he never saw coming. I imagine that became clear to him in the moment as well. Vettori has a great chin, so Izzy probably wasn't going to finish him, so I think he went into a risk management mode pretty quickly in that one. I don't blame him at all, but it doesn't make for the best product to watch. In a sport that not only uses the PPV model, but bases some of his payout off of what he sells, those things are important to some degree. Still, I'll give him a pass because the only way Vettori was going to beat him was going to be if Izzy did something stupid and made a mistake that left him exposed. Despite still being very good, his performance Saturday was sort of a let down for me. I get that most fighters would be praised for a performance like he put on Saturday, but is that really the standard that we are judging him by? I believe that Israel Adesanya is 1 of the 3 best active fighters in the world and I personally believe that comes with a different standard. Outside of Izzy himself, Robert Whittaker is the clear best fighter in that division and Adesanya couldn't really be bothered to go for it. Again, I'm not saying he should fight like Justin Gaethje and just start going crazy, but he really didn't even ensure a victory. Outside of the first round when he got the knock down, I don't think anyone could say for sure how those rounds were going to be scored. I don't know what he was seeing or feeling that made him so confident that he could just sort of coast to a victory. On a normal night, trusting MMA judging is a risky proposition. This, however, was a night where we saw 1 judge determine that Roxanne Modafferi and Jared Vanderaa won their fights and they lost pretty clearly. If someone could watch that fight and say Modafferi beat Casey O'Neill, then they definitely could have said Rob beat Izzy. Robert Whittaker was the last toughest fight that Izzy had on the horizon and he really didn't take advantage of it in my eyes. You could see it in their reaction after the fight that both of them know that if Rob can't beat him, no one in the rankings is going to. Look, you're not going to catch me saying that Izzy is a bad fighter or that he's a paper champion or anything of the sort. I'm not saying he lost or that he is even a boring fighter. I love watching Israel Adesanya fight, but I think he missed an opportunity. He had so much momentum that has sort of been halted. If he was able to go out and really separate himself from Vettori and Whittaker, there would probably be a lot more noise coming out of this one. No one post fight was questioning whether Izzy needs to move ahead of Usman in the pound for pound rankings and that is more so what I'm getting at. On a night where Jared Cannonier brutally finished Derek Brunson and Tai Tuivasa knocked Derrick Lewis out cold, Izzy just skirting by didn't feel as impressive.
Speaking of Jared Cannonier, I would be surprised if he's not Israel's next opponent. The only other candidate for the title shot was Sean Strickland and given how their performances look side by side, Cannonier has to get the opportunity. Cannonier was higher ranked to begin with, fought a tougher opponent who was hot himself, and won in impressive fashion. Whether Cannonier can defeat Izzy is a different conversation, but it is about as clear as it gets that he is the next rightful challenger. That's really all I have to say about what is next for Adesanya because it really is that clear for me.
When it comes to Robert Whittaker, I really feel bad for him. He's probably my favorite fighter, so I'm biased, but I can't help it. I don't think he won the fight, but I don't think any of the final 4 rounds were obvious either. He said in the moment that he thought he did enough, but I think upon rewatching the fight, he would probably agree that he lost. As an aside, there seems to be a lot of people talking about how "winning the fight isn't enough" and how you "need to take the belt from him" and that's just stupid, but whatever. That's kind of how I viewed this fight before the decision was read. If this was a normal fight, I think there would have been a lot higher of a chance that Whittaker could have gotten the decision, which again, I don't think he should have. I do however think there's something in the judge's brains about having to definitively take the title though, at least it seems that way at times. I just went on a whole diatribe about how I wasn't all that impressed with what Izzy did, but I'm not naive enough to think that part of that wasn't due to what Rob was doing. Whittaker's wrestling was even better than I expected. He was able to get quite a few takedowns across the entirety of the fight. Unfortunately, his overall ground game wasn't quite enough to hold Izzy down or do any damage to him off of those takedowns. He was able to jump on his back and get an opportunity for a choke, but he wasn't able to get it in and Izzy was able to scrape him off quickly after. Had he been able to attempt a submission or land some ground and pound after one of those takedowns, we could have had a very interesting situation on our hands. Two judges scored both the 4th and 5th rounds for Rob. He only needed to get the 2nd or 3rd and he would have won the fight and those rounds were there for the taking. Izzy didn't run away with them at all. A little bit of ground and pound or a submission attempt that got sort of close could have been enough to sway the round and the entire fight. I think he'll be kicking himself for not landing more strikes in the clinch and being a tiny bit more aggressive on the feet. He really did try the Jan Blachowicz strategy that I outlined. He was going to wrestle and then be patient on the feet and limit the amount of damage. I think he got more cautious after being sat down in the first and I think opening up a little more could have made the difference. Of course, taking that little extra risk could have gotten him finished, but with the hindsight we have now, what difference would it have made? I really think a big right hand, or a takedown with some damage done or a submission attempt at the right time could have resulted in a decision win for Whittaker. Of course, we didn't get that and Izzy did just enough to retain his title. Overall, I thought Rob was pretty good and I still think that he could beat Izzy, but I don't know if we'll get to see another fight. Whittaker is clearly the second best guy in the division though and he may be able to force his hand with enough wins.
I think that Robert will continue to fight and, more specifically, continue to fight at middleweight, so he'll need a next opponent. Rob is still at the top spot in the rankings, so he'll be getting a good opponent next and he has more than a few options. The ones that stand out are Marvin Vettori, Paulo Costa, Derek Brunson, and Sean Strickland. Normally I don't go over four potential opponents, but I'll keep these short. Whittaker vs Vettori is pretty straight forward since it puts the two highest ranked guys against each other. I still think Vettori vs Strickland is the fight to make, but apparently they are real life friends and Strickland doesn't really want to fight him, so maybe that really isn't an option. Whittaker vs Vettori would be fun and a good matchup that could and would likely serve as a fight night main event. However, it is sort of a fight that doesn't have a direction, much like Covington vs Masvidal in a few weeks. It would sort of be just putting on a good fight for the sake of a good fight, which I'm not opposed to, but I sort of get the feeling that the UFC isn't going to go that way. They somehow need to build a contender for future Adesanya title defenses and have the two top contenders who have both already lost to Izzy twice doesn't do anything to propel someone else to a title shot. My guess is that they will try to build a contender off of Vettori or Whittaker if they can. It would be a great fight, I just don't think that is the direction they will go. Paulo Costa is an interesting one because we still haven't really gotten any confirmation of what division he will be fighting in going forward. Dana White said he's going to 205, but Costa's team said he's staying at 185 and we haven't heard anything since the Vettori fight. If he is staying at 185, he may be the most likely opponent for Whittaker. They had this fight on the schedule once already, so if they liked it then, I'm sure they would still like it now with both men coming off a loss. This would give both guys a chance to bounce back and throw their name into potential title eliminator fights for the winner. I'm not going to waste time talking about Costa any further since his future is sort of foggy at the moment. Brunson is the real wild card in this scenario. He's said that his next fight will be his last, so there's really no need to follow any sort of conventional rules for his opponent. Since he's walking away win or lose, there's no need to try and build him as a contender and his ranking really doesn't even matter. I assume that they'll look to build a contender off of his name because that's how the MMA life cycle goes, but there's really not a ton of obvious names to even give him. I don't think a Whittaker fight is all the likely for him since they've already fought once before and no outcome of that fight would really benefit the UFC much, but I don't think it is impossible that we see it either. The final option is Sean Strickland and given Costa's question marks, I think this one may be the most likely. Strickland is the only guy who's really building towards a title shot if we are to assume Cannonier has already solidified the next one. Getting a win over Robert Whittaker would be more than enough to earn him the title shot after that and it is one of the only matchups that is even available to Strickland if he is to continue moving up in the rankings. I think Whittaker would welcome this matchup as well. There's part of me that feels like Robert Whittaker perceives that the UFC overlooks him and wants to bypass him to give other guys title shots until he forces their hand. He probably sees Strickland as the guy they are trying to push and would relish the opportunity to put his streak to an end. Maybe I'm just imagining things, but I've just gotten that vibe from Rob this past week or so and even dating back to the talk of how he didn't really want this fight, which was nonsense. Not to mention, a striking battle between Rob and Strickland would be plenty of fun to watch.
If I had to pick one right now, I think Strickland is the most likely, followed by Costa, Vettori, and Brunson, in that order. What do you guys think? What do you make of Izzy's performance? Is Jared Cannonier a lock to fight him next? What do you think of Robert Whittaker's future? Who could we see him go against in his next contest? Leave any and all thoughts below. Thanks for reading and have a good one.
Comments
Post a Comment