Here's everything you need to know about the middleweight title bout between champ Israel Adesanya and Sean Strickland on Saturday in Sydney.
How many acts in the Israel Adesanya show? Is a Tai Tuivasa shoey on tap?
Adesanya is a showman, there's no denying that. But the middleweight champion doesn't always put on a show. The night in 2019 when Adesanya won the belt for the first time, he did it in the swashbuckling style he'd become known for, attacking Robert Whittaker from impossible angles and dodging everything thrown back in his direction like a rubber action figure. Hands down at his side and chin stuck out as a"try to hit me" invitation, Adesanya made Whittaker look feeble before dropping him in the final seconds of Round 1 and knocking him out with a fancy flurry in the second.
But in his next five 185-pound fights, Adesanya managed just one knockout. He won every one of those bouts, but sometimes he appeared to be coasting, serving up vanilla performances. His reputation among the loudest and crankiest of the MMA fan base slipped from bodacious to boring. Adesanya rightfully refused to absorb the criticism all by himself, though, noting that on many nights, he was saddled with opponents too timid to bring a fight to him.
That will not be the case Saturday. Strickland is an aggressor and unafraid of engagement, sometimes to his detriment. He's also basic in his skills, which might sound like ridicule but is not. Strickland is solid, tough and straightforward, and he will give Adesanya a fight -- and an opportunity to pile up crowd-pleasing style points.
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