UFC middleweight champion Israel Adesanya has a single loss in his MMA career. It came when he attempted to capture the light heavyweight crown, only to lose to then-champ Jan Blachowicz. With Blachowicz no longer the 205-pound champ, UFC commentator Michael Bisping is fascinated by the prospect of a rematch at the weight where Adesanya reigns supreme: middleweight.
“He fought at 200 pounds in Muay Thai, and when you look at the body shape of Jan Blachowicz — and I am not fat shaming. He’s a tremendous athlete, but he’s got a little bit to lose. I’m not saying he’s fat, far from it, but he’s not the most ripped, so maybe he can lose a few pounds. If he got down to 200 pounds like he did in the past, then I think he can make the weight. When I was fighting at middleweight, I used to want to show up at the fighter hotel at 200 pounds. If I did that, with the water loading, with the weight cut process, I could make 185 pretty easily.
Bisping Predicts Adesanya vs Blachowicz 2 At Middleweight to be “Very, Very Interesting”
Well, not easily. It was almost killing myself every god damn time, but you get what I’m saying.” Bisping went on to describe why the rematch is “interesting”.
“For Jan Blachowicz, this is interesting because for Izzy, he’s going to want the rematch. This is the only person to beat him, but now it’s a very dangerous fight for him at 185. If you think about Jan Blachowicz and the first fight with Izzy, it was kind of even on the feet. Both guys had some success.
Jan Blachowicz is really, really good at checking leg kicks and in the first fight he would check the leg kick and then fire back with a couple of shots, a good jab, a good left hook that was catching him a lot. And then in rounds four and five he switched it up, he got some takedowns, and he was the only person really so far in Izzy’s run in the UFC that was able to take him down and hold him down. You’ve got to think a lot of that was because of the weight.”
A significant factor will be the loss of strength inherent to most weight cuts. “One thing for sure, he will not be as strong. So could he take him down? Did strength play a factor? I think it was more timing and technique that put him down but strength does come into it.
He won’t be as explosive and he won’t be as powerful, but one thing he will be is faster. That’s a fact. When you lose some of that extra bit of flab he’s got and a little bit of muscle, he will be faster. So that will help him. That will help him on the feet and help him with his reflexes. So it’s very, very interesting.”
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