UFC 293 - Adesanya vs Strickland preview
The UFC are heading back to Sydney for the first time in 6 years, and unsurprisingly middleweight champion Israel Adesanya is at the top of the bill. Last time ‘Stylebender’ fought in Australia was when he became the undisputed champ after knocking out Robert Whittaker in front of a record breaking attendance at the Marvel Stadium in Melbourne. He is now looking for his 6th middleweight title defence, and the first since he won back his belt from Alex Pereira earlier this year.
After Dricus Du Plessis’ statement win against Robert Whittaker in July it seemed a foregone conclusion that it would be him vs Adesanya to headline the Australia card, but unfortunately Du Plessis sustained an injury which made him unable to make the September date. Even though the UFC actually managed to sell out the Qudos Bank arena without a confirmed main event, they still had to find an opponent for the middleweight champion and eventually landed on Sean Strickland. There is already some friction between the two after they had some verbal altercations at the press conference of last years international fight week, and they definitely brought that same energy to the Thursday press conference.
Whether or not Strickland managed to get into Adesanya’s head won’t really matter for the outcome of the fight in my opinion, as Adesanya is usually capable of putting emotions to the side when stepping into the octagon and I expect that to be the case against Strickland as well.
We know that mixed martial arts is a sport where anything can happen, but everything points towards an easy night for ‘Stylebender’. Strickland has no doubt improved in the last year, but we saw what happened when he went toe to toe with an elite kickboxer in Alex Pereira at UFC 276 and tried to strike with him. Pereira didn’t even take a round to figure him out and knocked him out in just two and a half minutes. Adesanya doesn’t have the raw power of Alex Pereira, but his timing and accuracy makes up for that as we’ve seen on several occasions, and even though he’ often labeled as a “boring” fighter, he tend to be at his best when his opponent leads the dance and he can counter. Strickland is traditionally a fighter who fits that description but for this fight it could be a good idea to deviate from the usual gameplan, and with a great coach like Eric Nicksick that is likely to the be the case. I just think Israel Adesanya will be too good for Strickland, and the grappling won’t even be relevant.
I might be too confident in this prediction considering some of the upsets we have seen in the past year (even as recent as when Sean O’Malley won the title last month), but I’m confident that Israel Adesanya will get it done by KO inside the distance.