Israel Adesanya versus Anderson Silva, and there are a few moving parts here.
First off, wow!
Wow, incredible fight.
Second off, okay, look at the odds of that fight.
Izzy comes out as a favorite but full respecting Anderson, right?
I mean, what a cool move for Anderson accepting that fight.
Certainly, Izzy isn't somebody that Anderson looks at and goes, “Oh yeah, easy night,”
and I think Anderson deserves credit.
You know, he went and stepped in there with Cormier on about two days’ notice, three
days’ notice at the most for UFC 200.
I mean, he's done so at a different weight class, not training.
Was it a different country?
They had to fly him in.
I mean, he's done some cool stuff over the years that has been good for the sport and
good for the company.
When you look at this fight, this could be great for Anderson.
Anderson goes out, beats Izzy, boom, he's fighting for a title next.
Izzy beats Anderson, he's fighting for a title next.
I mean, there are heavy implications on this fight.
I think we could all agree to that.
Even if you wanted to complain and go, “Well, what about Jacare?
What about Yoel?
And what about Rockhold?”
Have those conversations all you want, but I think we still understand this fight is
to clearly figure out the #1 contender.
And on that same card, which is also relevant to the story, is Gastelum versus Whittaker
for the belt, so you could only envision that the post fight press conference, boom, you
make the next fight.
You also have to understand, Izzy had turned down a standby spot to fill in should something
happen to Whittaker or Gastelum and go right in for the belt or end up like Kamaru Usman
did where he just gets the check for training, gets to pay his trainers and his managers,
makes weight, goes to the medicals, and never gets to compete and then has to jump right
back in line.
He turned that down, but it is relevant that he's now on the card with Anderson because
should either Gastelum or Whittaker not be able to move forward somebody from that fight
will.
Will it be Anderson?
Will it be Izzy?
I don't know, but somebody from that fight that is now on that card will step in.
So that’s a bit of a talking point whether it comes to fruition or not, but now that's
become a little bit more clear.
And Izzy had come out, Israel Adesanya had come out—I'm going to call him Izzy, guys.
It's quicker, less syllables.
But he had come out, I think it was over the weekend, number of days ago, and he said,
“I sold Dana White on my masterplan.”
Now, a few takeaways from that.
First off, did that even happen?
Did he have a masterplan?
Did he sell Dana on it?
Was that just something catchy he was going to say for a headline?
I'm going to take it at face value.
I believe he did have a masterplan and I believe he presented it and I believe he got Dana
to go, “Yeah, okay, I like that.”
What we don't know is what that plan was, but now we know an element of it.
An element of it was, “Give me Anderson Silva.
Give me a huge-name guy who’s widely respected, let me see if I can beat him, and then I could
become a huge-name guy who’s widely respected.”
And if you look at that match, it's a very compelling matchup for a couple of reasons.
Izzy is currently largely what Anderson was, and when I say that I don’t agree that anything
with Anderson has diminished over time.
I think he was a fantastic fighter back when, I think he's a fantastic fighter now.
However, Israel Adesanya does get to the punch a little bit quicker and speed is something
that comes with age.
I don't know that he's distinctly faster than Anderson Silva but I think that it's something
that would be fair for you to point out.
Anderson Silva has never been in there with a better standup fighter.
That is my opinion, and if I am forgetting somebody, guys, please correct me, but I can't
remember him being in there with a better standup fighter.
The belief with Anderson was always you have to get him off his feet.
Do not try to fight with him on his feet.
He's too tricky, he's too cagey, and he's too dynamic.
He'll use his knee bone, he'll use his elbow as much as he'll use his hands and his feet.
He's just very, very hard to get a read on.
I think that's right.
I don't think he's ever been in there with somebody that we've thought is a more dynamic
or even an equally dynamic, standup, kickboxing Muay-Thai-style fighter.
I think that we would agree that Izzy fits that bill largely because Adesanya came from
this.
So many people forget that.
So many times he doesn’t get credit for what he did before he ever got to mixed martial
arts.
I believe his record in kickboxing was 29 and 3.
I know I'm close even if I've got that wrong.
It's off the top of my head, but I think it was 29 and 3, so he’s been in there over
30 times exclusively standup fight.
He's a very good standup fighter.
When you take somebody like Anderson, who was this great Muay Thai fighter who was doing
Muay Thai standup kickboxing bouts, he also in conjunction with that, secretly, but was
working on the ground game.
He had a black belt in jiu-jitsu.
So when he came over to mixed martial arts, boom, he was just one of the most complete
fighters there was, and it took over a decade and guys still couldn't catch him.
That's how far he was ahead of the game.
He was so far ahead of the game that 10 years later he's still ahead of the game.
Okay, Adesanya largely just represents that same thing, and we don’t see it very often.
That's why it's celebrated.
It's celebrated and we discuss it because it's an anomaly of sorts of.
We see many grapplers, whether they came from the world of competitive jiu-jitsu or the
world of competitive wrestling, but we see many of them come into mixed martial arts
develop the standup skills and be able to go on and have really great careers.
We don’t see that as much with guys who came in striker-heavy, the strikers, the boxers,
the kickboxers that then have to learn the grappling, learn a five-minute round as opposed
to three.
I mean, it just is different and it's rare and you could take that all the way back to
the mid-nineties when Maurice Smith went on his run and Maurice Smith became the first
ever striker to go on and reach the heights and ultimately a world championship and I
believe an induction into the hall of fame.
But it was so shocking back then.
We all thought we had the sport figured out, all had it figured out because of Royce Gracie
and Ken Shamrock.
We all had it figured—Dan Severn gets credit—that you had to be a better grappler than your
opponent; you were going to beat him in an actual fight.
Maurice came along and he goes, “Not so fast.
I can keep this fight standing up.
I can slow these wrestlers down.
I could chop their legs and punch them in the face.”
It was just an interesting time, but that time then got put on hold in large part for
20 years.
It got put on hold till you started seeing these great strikers coming back.
Jose Aldo comes to mind, of course Anderson Silva who we're talking about, and now Israel
Adesanya.
And Anderson to my knowledge, and I don't think I've ever missed an Anderson fight—I
think I've seen them all—to my knowledge Anderson has never been in a fight where he
has then said, “Hey, you know what, I don’t like this realm being the standup.
I'm going to take this thing to the ground.”
I don't think that's ever happened, and it would be interesting in a standup battle if
Israel Adesanya gets the jump on.
It would be very interesting to see Anderson for the first time force a clinch.
We've seen Anderson wrestle a lot.
We've seen him wrestle from the clinch on his feet, do work off of the bottom, but we've
never seen him force the position.
We've just seen him react to the position.
So in that regard, you know, for so many years—and Anderson is must-watch TV for me.
Even as his opponent, even as a guy he rubbed the wrong way plenty of times, I didn't want
to miss seeing him fight.
There was something going to happen.
There was going to be a learning experience.
There was going to be something and there was a reason you needed to tune in.
If for nothing else, aside from the great competitive match, aside from the stakes of
this match that one of them truly will go and fight for the world championship next
for sure—for sure, I'm right about that—aside from all of that, I would also predict for
you you're going to see a different Anderson Silva, okay?
You're going to see him for the first time ever, perhaps, forcing that clinch, looking
for a takedown.
Perhaps.
The other side of that is, why did Anderson accept this fight?
So many people think that he does not have much of a chance, that he is the old guard
taking on the new guard.
I don’t have the answer to that.
Some guys aren't all bullies.
Not everybody only accepts fights they know that they can win.
Some guys still want to go out there and compete and test themselves and if they don’t have
enough, if they didn't work hard enough, if Father Time has got—then they’ll pass
the torch to the next guy.
That's part of being a competitor: You go out there and you do it anyway.
Perhaps that's a side.
I don't know if Anderson has that.
Perhaps it's a side.
But, I think the other side, which is more likely, is I think Anderson likes the match.
I think Anderson Silva, who's had to go out there and has had overwhelming success when
he can keep fights on his feet, has always had to deal with a guy who's trying to take
him down, who's watched his highlight reels, who’s followed his career, and who wants
to get him to the floor.
I think Anderson may look at this fight and go, “Finally you give me a guy that fights
the way I want to fight.
We're going to stand up and fight.”
And the question of just how good Anderson is, look, we've answered the question how
good his career has been on the world championships and the defending of those championships,
of keeping that intact night after night, two different weight classes, for years.
Three different weight classes.
If you want to look before UFC, he was down to 170 pounds.
Three different weight classes.
But we never really answered the question, what exactly can he do specifically in this
realm when he has a dance partner who is willing to keep the fight there the entire time?
I think that it just makes for a fascinating match.
As I'm looking at matches, yes, I do think that the younger guy Adesanya, I recognize
he's the favorite, I think he should be, I think there's good reason, but I also think
that there's going to be a very compelling story here to just how good is Anderson at
what we've all seen him be brilliant at when the other allows him to work at that range.
I think it makes for a really interesting match.
I think it's going to put Anderson in a spot that we've simply never seen him, right when
you think you've seen it all.
I mean, are there very many veterans, are there very many icons of the sport that have
been around that long that you could possibly think, “Well, no, he's done everything.
I've seen him with everything and some tests he passed and some tests he failed, but there's
nothing new out there?”
Well, no.
This is new.
This is 100% new where Anderson is taking on, at least on paper, a guy who’s better
on his feet than him.
I don’t believe that's ever happened, just the paper of it.
I don’t think anybody ever had a résumé to match Anderson’s on his feet, but then
also in a guy who is not going to shoot, who is not going to force a clinch and be looking
for a takedown, who is willing to play Anderson’s game as long as it needs to be played.
I don't think we've ever seen that.
Even Georges St-Pierre, put him in there with strikers, put him in there with grapplers,
put him in there with all-around guys, I don't think you could pull George out and put him
in with a style that he's never seen.
I don't think you could pull Randy Couture out of retirement and do the same thing to
him or Dan Henderson, just by example.
The guys that have been around that long, been in there, done it all, seen it all over
multiple weight classes, over a decade.
I think that this is a real unforeseen.
I think there are a lot of question marks on this.
And I think anybody that's saying, “Oh, Anderson doesn’t belong in there and Adesanya’s
going to run him over,” okay, maybe, maybe, but you actually haven't seen a fight like
this for Anderson.
It's different.
They're playing his game.
Lot to risk.
Look, when somebody comes and plays your game, if he gets over on you, lot to risk for Anderson,
which in large part is why my respect for Anderson went up by him saying yes when they
called and asked him to do this fight.