Israel Adesanya successfully defended his UFC middleweight title after defeating Yoel Romero by unanimous decision of the judges. The fight turned out to be a very exciting affair.
Israel Adesnya had a few professional kickboxing matches years ago that he lost. In 2017, his last fight in the sport concluded when he was knocked out by Alex Pereira. His mixed martial arts (MMA) career developed on the same timeline as his kicking career did and has been more successful for him than any of his kicks have been in his past five fights.
Yoel Romero
Romero is the 2000 Olympic silver medalist in freestyle wrestling and the 1999 world champion. He could have won a bronze medal at Athens 2004, but lost to Sajid Sajidov. In 2007 Romero went to Germany for his wrestling career, then he made his debut in MMA – winning his first fight at age 32.
Since May 27th, Romero has won eight straight fights before he suffered a setback. However, the fighter managed to bounce back recently with victory over Paulo Costa in an injury-plagued fight and was given his third shot at Robert Whittaker for the middleweight title.
At UFC, the co-main event that interested me most was between Weili Zhang and Joanna Jędrzejczyk. They threw 351 punches with meaningful collisions, there were a third of them. The other fight I want to talk about is the one between Adesanya and Romero. It looked like more pugilist boxing, but they only managed 367 such hits in total! You could say it wasn’t classic at all.
The fight
In the first five minutes, we can see that Romero threw four strikes and Adesanya had three. Yoel kept his post while Yisrael is afraid to go forward.
Daly had a good first round. It was all defence from Adesanya early and middle rounds, but Daly finally got him in the third and really decked him for it.
Round three. Adesanya became more liberated – he picked up the key to Romero. He’s throwing more jabs, low kicks. He didn’t shake the Cuban once, but he absolutely took the round. Yoel ended up with a take-down that doesn’t count because his opponent got away from him before being clinched for long enough to have it count as a takedown.
In round four, fighter Israel Adesanya was the clear aggressor. Referee Dan Miragliotta urged the fighters to fight, “Give the judges something to judge you by.” Adesanya’s low kicks made a difference – Romero’s front leg began to wobble and he did nothing in response. The 42-year-old professional martial artist didn’t need support from his corner because his opponent was putting himself into unfavorable positions for him in each subsequent round..
Fifth round. Romero stepped up, attempted to hit Adesanya several times with his left arm, called for a takedown at the end… But it was not enough to win. As a result, the champion won by unanimous decision of the judges.
Result
Romero’s strategy was to stand still and wait for Adesanya to lunge at him with an open guard- a counter striker who never does that?A ridiculous excuse. But the Cuban was applauded. Although he deserved to be whistled just as much as his opponent.
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