It’s a battle for Oceania as New Zealand’s Israel Adesanya faces off against Australian Robert Whittaker in a rematch of their violent 2018 fight.
The big fights just keep coming.
Hot off Kamaru Usman vs. Colby Covington 2 and Rose Namajunas vs. Zhang Weili 2, we move on to UFC 269 on December 11th featuring Dustin Poirier’s next attempt to earn a lightweight title against current champion Charles Oliveira. UFC 270 on January 22nd is being headlined by the heavyweight title unification bout between Francis Ngannou and Ciryl Gane.
And now UFC 271 on February 12th is looking like it will have middleweight champ Israel Adesanya taking on Robert Whittaker for the second time.
Multiple sources confirmed with MMA Fighting that the UFC was looking to land Adesanya vs. Whittaker 2 on the card, although bout agreements have not been signed by either men. Neither is currently feuding with the UFC in public about pay, though, so chances are good there’ll be nothing getting in the way of seeing this New Zealand vs. Australia showdown early in 2022.
Champ Israel Adesanya is coming off his third middleweight title defense, a decision win over Marvin Vettori at UFC 263 in June. Before that “The Last Stylebender” was rebuffed in his attempt to join the ranks of champ champs when he failed to win a light heavyweight title fight against Jan Blachowicz.
As for Robert Whittaker, the Australian has racked up three decision wins over tough competiton in Darren Till, Jared Cannonier, and Kelvin Gastelum to earn his second crack at Adesanya. The two originally fought in October of 2019 at UFC 243, where interim champ Adesanya took the full middleweight title off Whittaker via KO in the second round.
Since then there’s been a certain amount of gamesmanship being played between Adesanya and Whittaker’s camps, with Adesanya coach Eugene Bareman repeatedly downplaying Whittaker’s value as a legit contender and implying they weren’t in a rush to give him a rematch. But with Whittaker not only the #1 ranked contender at 185 pounds and the most marketable of the top contenders, this second fight was inevitable.
Also on the UFC 271 card thus far: Renato Moicano vs. Alexander Hernandez, Roxanne Modafferi’s retirement fight vs. Casey O’Neill, and Kyler Phillips vs. Marcelo Rojo. We’ll keep you up to speed on any further developments and additions to the card as they come.