The Film Room: Israel Adesanya
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Israel Adesanya returns to the Octagon Saturday for a dream fight with Anderson Silva in the co-main event of UFC 234. The middleweight made a name for himself in kickboxing, going 75-5 with 48 knockouts, and has made a seamless transition to mixed martial arts while becoming one of the most exciting prospects in the Ultimate Fighting Championship.
We didn’t know what to expect from Adesanya when he joined the UFC, but he quickly proved he’s one of the best strikers to ever grace the Octagon. His feints and distance management are second to none, and his patient and varied attack make it almost impossible to know what’s coming next. He had Rob Wilkinson hurt in the first round but chose to slowly pick him apart instead of aggressively looking for the finish and risk getting hit. Patience is a virtue and his ability to not get overwhelmed and stay patient on the big stage while never putting himself in position to be hit is extremely rare in MMA. The New Zealander’s striking style also seems to be better for this sport than it was for kickboxing. Lots of feints and fakes, lacing in jabs from below the opponent’s guard since he keeps his hands low, constant stance switches, and the ability to stay patient and intelligently pick his openings.
Adesanya is a master at setting traps for his opponents and using their tendencies against them and that is only achievable with elite feinting ability. Using a variety of feints and benefitting from the ability to comfortably fight out of both stances, he can overwhelm an opponent’s reactions without even throwing a strike. Most people look at feinting as a sort of useless tick that every fighter does, and in some cases it is. But for someone like “The Last Stylebender,” each and every feint has a purpose. Whether he’s trying to draw reactions out of his opponent and look to counter, or just feinting to see how they react to set them up later in the bout, each movement has justification.
Against Brad Tavares, Adesanya was using these Lyoto Machida-like hip feints to set up his body kicks. Tavares already keeps his hands high by his head but with each hip feint, he was closing them together in anticipation of a head kick. Instead, he would feint the hips to get his hands high and then immediately throw a kick to the body, sometimes with a stance switch in-between.
A lot of people have claimed Adesanya is the next Silva because of their similar striking styles. This is somewhat true but what is undeniably the same between the two is how they choose to defend attacks. Both of their defenses revolve around footwork and evasive movement. Some fighters prefer to stand their ground and block strikes with their arms and legs, but if the point of hand-to-hand combat is to hit and not get hit, then using footwork to evade attacks seems like the superior strategy. Although they would rather use their clever footwork to evade, they are both adept at rolling with strikes and taking them on the forearms and shoulders, especially Silva. Adesanya relies a bit more on his footwork to evade than Silva, but at the end of the day, their defensive styles are eerily similar.
Against Tavares, Adesanya liberally used the shoulder roll every time his opponent came in with a double jab.
Adesanya looked as calm as ever in his most recent bout with Derek Brunson, and when he decided to go for the finish he knocked him out almost immediately. Most of the round was spent defending takedowns against the cage and the second they separated it seemed like you could see the switch flip and he decided to go for the finish and scored the knockout seconds later. This reminded me a lot of Silva in his prime. In his prime, it seemed “Spider” could end the fight whenever he wanted but chose to play around (such as in the Stephan Bonner bout). Although this is probably not the case, it seemed Adesanya was doing the same thing to Brunson and executed an effortless knockout.
Although a striker, the most impressive aspect of Adesanya’s game thus far has been his takedown defense. One question always dogs fighters transitioning from kickboxing or boxing to MMA: How will they perform on the ground? As seen with fighters like Stephen Thompson and Joanna Jedrzejczyk, some strikers only need effective takedown defense to succeed. He seems to be taking the same approach, as he has used magnificent defensive footwork to deny 34 of the 40 takedowns attempted against him in the UFC. An interesting aspect of this fight is that every one of his opponents has been actively looking to take him and Silva is the first person that will most likely be okay with standing and striking with him. Without the threat of the takedown in the back of his head, who knows what “The Last Stylebender” is capable of.
Israel Adesanya returns to the Octagon Saturday for a dream fight with Anderson Silva in the co-main event of UFC 234. The middleweight made a name for himself in kickboxing, going 75-5 with 48 knockouts, and has made a seamless transition to mixed martial arts while becoming one of the most exciting prospects in the Ultimate Fighting Championship.
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We didn’t know what to expect from Adesanya when he joined the UFC, but he quickly proved he’s one of the best strikers to ever grace the Octagon. His feints and distance management are second to none, and his patient and varied attack make it almost impossible to know what’s coming next. He had Rob Wilkinson hurt in the first round but chose to slowly pick him apart instead of aggressively looking for the finish and risk getting hit. Patience is a virtue and his ability to not get overwhelmed and stay patient on the big stage while never putting himself in position to be hit is extremely rare in MMA. The New Zealander’s striking style also seems to be better for this sport than it was for kickboxing. Lots of feints and fakes, lacing in jabs from below the opponent’s guard since he keeps his hands low, constant stance switches, and the ability to stay patient and intelligently pick his openings.
Adesanya is a master at setting traps for his opponents and using their tendencies against them and that is only achievable with elite feinting ability. Using a variety of feints and benefitting from the ability to comfortably fight out of both stances, he can overwhelm an opponent’s reactions without even throwing a strike. Most people look at feinting as a sort of useless tick that every fighter does, and in some cases it is. But for someone like “The Last Stylebender,” each and every feint has a purpose. Whether he’s trying to draw reactions out of his opponent and look to counter, or just feinting to see how they react to set them up later in the bout, each movement has justification.
Against Brad Tavares, Adesanya was using these Lyoto Machida-like hip feints to set up his body kicks. Tavares already keeps his hands high by his head but with each hip feint, he was closing them together in anticipation of a head kick. Instead, he would feint the hips to get his hands high and then immediately throw a kick to the body, sometimes with a stance switch in-between.
A lot of people have claimed Adesanya is the next Silva because of their similar striking styles. This is somewhat true but what is undeniably the same between the two is how they choose to defend attacks. Both of their defenses revolve around footwork and evasive movement. Some fighters prefer to stand their ground and block strikes with their arms and legs, but if the point of hand-to-hand combat is to hit and not get hit, then using footwork to evade attacks seems like the superior strategy. Although they would rather use their clever footwork to evade, they are both adept at rolling with strikes and taking them on the forearms and shoulders, especially Silva. Adesanya relies a bit more on his footwork to evade than Silva, but at the end of the day, their defensive styles are eerily similar.
Against Tavares, Adesanya liberally used the shoulder roll every time his opponent came in with a double jab.
Adesanya looked as calm as ever in his most recent bout with Derek Brunson, and when he decided to go for the finish he knocked him out almost immediately. Most of the round was spent defending takedowns against the cage and the second they separated it seemed like you could see the switch flip and he decided to go for the finish and scored the knockout seconds later. This reminded me a lot of Silva in his prime. In his prime, it seemed “Spider” could end the fight whenever he wanted but chose to play around (such as in the Stephan Bonner bout). Although this is probably not the case, it seemed Adesanya was doing the same thing to Brunson and executed an effortless knockout.
Although a striker, the most impressive aspect of Adesanya’s game thus far has been his takedown defense. One question always dogs fighters transitioning from kickboxing or boxing to MMA: How will they perform on the ground? As seen with fighters like Stephen Thompson and Joanna Jedrzejczyk, some strikers only need effective takedown defense to succeed. He seems to be taking the same approach, as he has used magnificent defensive footwork to deny 34 of the 40 takedowns attempted against him in the UFC. An interesting aspect of this fight is that every one of his opponents has been actively looking to take him and Silva is the first person that will most likely be okay with standing and striking with him. Without the threat of the takedown in the back of his head, who knows what “The Last Stylebender” is capable of.
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