Israel Adesanya waits during his decision win over Yoel Romero to retain the middleweight title at T-Mobile Arena on March 07, 2020 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Harry How/Getty Images)
Israel Adesanya will be defending his middleweight title in his next fight
The reigning king of the middleweight division, Israel Adesanya has been a force to reckon with. ‘The Last Stylebender’ has taken the UFC by storm ever since his debut against Rob Wilkinson.
Just a year after that, he won the middleweight championship, beating the largely feared Robert ‘The Reaper’ Whittaker at UFC 243.
Since then, he has defended his middleweight belt twice, against Yoel Romero at UFC 247 and Paulo Costa at UFC 253.
He will now be taking on number 3 ranked UFC middleweight Marvin Vettori in his next fight. The fight will be headlining UFC 263 on the 12th of June at the Gila River Arena in Glendale, Arizona.
This will be Adesanya’s third title-defense fight, and also a rematch against the Italian Dream.
The pair last met at UFC on Fox: Poirier vs Gaethje in April 2018, when they were relatively unknown names. Adesanya won the fight via. a narrow split decision.
Adesanya was a well established kickboxer before he took up MMA as a full time career. He has a record of 20 wins and 1 loss in his professional MMA career.
In the UFC, Adesanya has 9 wins and 1 loss. His only loss came against Jan Blachowicz in his last fight at UFC 259. Having conquered the middleweight division to the fullest, Adesanya decided to move to the light-heavyweight division in a bid to become a two-division champion.
But, Blachowicz the LHW champ, was too good for Adesanya on the ground, and ended up winning via. unanimous decision. However, Adesanya is still undefeated as a middleweight.
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