UFC 293 provided us with the biggest shock of the year as Sean Strickland out-pointed the (now) former middleweight champion, Israel Adesanya to capture the 185lbs strap.
Across 25 minutes, Adesanya seemed to be fresh out of ideas after his initial game plan didn’t work. After being dropped and hurt in the first round, The Last Style bender never appeared to be in the fight. A good second round saw Izzy seemingly get into his rhythm, however, he couldn’t maintain it.
What was interesting is just how poor Adesanya looked. We’ve seen him lose two fights throughout his career thus far, one up at light heavyweight against then-champion, Jan Blachowicz and one more recently against Alex Pereira.