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Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) interim strap-hanger, Israel Adesanya, will attempt to unify the title opposite fellow knockout artist, Robert Whittaker, this Saturday (Oct. 5, 2019) at UFC 243 from inside Marvel Stadium in Melbourne, Australia.
It’s been a remarkably quick road to the top for “Stylebender.” Less than two years since he joined the roster, Adesanya has already torn through the division and captured interim gold, forcing himself to the front of the line in a talent-rich division. Of course, having 81 professional kickboxing bouts previous to his UFC stint certainly helped prepare him for success, but we’ve seen plenty of decorated kickboxers fall short when attempting to transition into the Octagon.
Adesanya is the real deal, so let’s take a closer look at his skill set:
Striking
There is a ton of flash to Adesanya’s kickboxing style — and I don’t mean to downplay its effectiveness, because a spinning elbow to the face is a devastating blow — but the core of his approach is really excellent defense, active feints, and smart strike selection.
Adesanya looks to fight from the outside, where he’s dangerous both on the lead and while countering. Regardless of which approach he’s taking, Adesanya is going to be feinting and kicking. On the whole, MMA fighters feint with punches fairly often, and the good ones show takedown feints too. However, few have learned the valuable of a good feint with the hips.
Adesanya hip feints constantly, quite literally thrusting his hips at opponents to give the impression that a kick is coming. It’s low energy and safe, often a setup for counters. Should his opponent take the bait and attempt to throw a punch, Adesanya is likely too far back and in perfect position to counter. Once Adesanya lands a hard kick, it’s difficult not to respect the hip feint.
After his foe respects the feint, Adesanya will build from it. He’ll feint with his hips, draw out a defensive reaction, then blast the kick. In a confusingly similar manner (for his opponents), Adesanya can actually lift his leg to show the kick and instead take a big step into the opposite stance, where he’ll rip a hard kick or stab a 1-2.
Overall, Adesanya is not a fighter who works in long combinations. His feints are strong enough that Adesanya’s stiff jab or 1-2 lead often land. Adesanya will often follow his short combo of punches with a hard kick, but if he doesn’t, “Stylebender” is always ready to roll or slip following his offense.
Adesanya is able to get away with throwing shorter combinations because he feints and reads opponents so well. He understands how they’re moving and where they’ll be, which also makes it easier to land up flashy techniques like a jump spinning back kick or question mark kick.
One of the common ways Adesanya scores is to present his foe with a seemingly easy target, pull back, and counter. Notably, Adesanya always retreats without breaking stance, which makes it easier to fire back a counter right hand. In this week’s technique highlight, we analyze some of Adesanya’s counter fighting strategy.
Adesanya enters this match up following a “Fight of the Year” candidate with Kelvin Gastelum, and that back-and-forth battle gave us plenty of insight into Adesanya. It also highlighted a pair of pretty invaluable traits: the ability to adjust and smart strike selection.
The first round did not go well to Adesanya. His strategy seemed to be to focus mostly on counter punching, but Gastelum is incredibly fast. It’s difficult to counter punch a faster man — Gastelum was able to score his heavy left hand too consistently, and one even hurt Adesanya.
Adesanya adjusted in the second by shifting into a more offensive strategy. He began really stepping forward with power kicks, smartly ripping his right kick into the Southpaw’s lead leg and mid-section. He shifted back to his fundamentals, relying heavily on the right kick to do damage. As a result, his counter punches began to land with better consistency, as Gastelum’s speed was diminished by the body/leg work. Plus, Gastelum was more likely to lunge forward when getting blasted by kicks, whereas earlier he was able to slip his way into the pocket.
Another range tactic in Adesanya’s arsenal that is more common among excellent kickboxers is hand trapping. He’s quite willing to reach out and jam up one of his opponent’s hands, which can lead to a lot of different offensive opportunities for Adesanya. Often, he’ll occupy a hand then blast a kick, but he’ll commonly grab the wrist and use that moment to take an angle. Against Brad Tavares, Adesanya repeatedly used hand traps to land elbows (GIF), a favorite strategy of Jon Jones.
Defensively, Adesanya is hugely confident in his range control. His usual reach advantage largely limits his foe’s options, meaning he only has to be prepared to defend against a handful of techniques. It’s much easier to pull off beautiful slips and rolls (GIF) when his opponent can only hope to reach him with straight punches and maybe a kick. 4 oz. gloves mean that it’s always a risky to fight with hands low, but Adesanya’s defense is still pretty great.
Wrestling
Adesanya has gotten good at wrestling with remarkable speed. His first two UFC fights showed some decent fundamentals and the right scrambling mentality, but he was still taken down multiple times but fighters nowhere near as talented as Kelvin Gastelum and Derek Brunson, neither of whom found any success trapping Adesanya on the mat.
Adesanya fights tall, and as such, it’s easier to get deep on his hips, which is generally a very bad sign for takedown defense. However, Adesanya has proven to have very strong hips, one of those invaluable assets that’s difficult to explain technically. It’s quite noticeable though, as Adesanya was able to circle his hips back and sprawl even when Gastelum secured a strong grip below the butt.
Length helps quite a bit in lots of regards. It may be easier to get on Adesanya’s legs, but he’s going to bounce on one leg and be difficult to pick up into the air. Plus, he’s likely punching his opponent in the face mid-takedown attempt, which complicates things plenty.
When Adesanya has been put on his back, he’s shown the right mentality, which can largely be boiled down to, “don’t stop moving.” As his technique has improved, that’s resulted in better scrambling and submission attempts against Gastelum, but even his debut showed the foundation of such skill. Against Rob Wilkinson, Adesanya successfully forward rolled out of the back clinch. That’s an actual technique, one that counters the opponent’s forward momentum and attempt to hang on by throwing them forward, and Adesanya showed real guts to pull it off (GIF).
Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu
Adesanya hasn’t done a ton of jiu-jitsu inside the cage, because his focus has been on defending takedowns and scrambling back up quickly. However, the bulk of his mat work came against a talented wrestler in Gastelum in the fifth round of a crazy war — and it was still strong technique (GIF)!
In one prolonged exchange, Adesanya first countered a takedown attempt with a high-elbow guillotine, forcing Gastelum to fall to his back to defend. Adesanya did fall victim to Gastelum’s excellent arm roll and wind up on his back soon after, but he immediately threw up a triangle choke. He was able to secure a good angle, but his lock was over his own foot rather than shin, which does alleviate the pressure a bit. He wasn’t able to finish the submission, but forcing Gastelum on the defensive with submissions late in the fight was still a promising sign for Adesanya’s overall grappling ability.
Conclusion
Adesanya’s rise has been meteoric, but there’s still an incredible champion standing in his way. A win here would really be a star-making moment for Adesanya, potentially exposing him to an even wider audience. Afterward, there are still plenty of great challenges left at Middleweight, but becoming such a big name fighter would create other high-profile opportunities for “Stylebender.”
Andrew Richardson, a Brazilian jiu-jitsu brown belt, is a professional fighter who trains at Team Alpha Male in Sacramento, California. In addition to learning alongside world-class talent, Andrew has scouted opponents and developed winning strategies for several of the sport’s most elite fighters.