The Bending of the Style: Israel Adesanya In 6 Fights
Photo by Carmen Mandato/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images
Israel Adesanya is the best striker in MMA at the moment, and arguably its best fighter, full stop. In terms of sheer excitement, Izzy has earned some deservedly high marks, but what has impressed me even more is his technical development over his kickboxing career, and his UFC tenure. Adesanya has made his way through what should be a hellacious run of contenders, but as the fights have grown in prestige, Israel has met and exceeded expectations nearly every time. There has been tangible growth from one bout to the next, both in terms of building on his esteemed kickboxing background and by simply getting better at MMA. Here are six essential fights from Israel Adesanya:
Israel Adesanya vs. Jamie Eades
One of Izzy’s first breakout wins as a kickboxer was in the finals of King in the Ring’s heavyweight tournament. After winning two previous cruiserweight tournaments, Adesanya capped off his time on the New Zealand circuit with a victory over Jamie Eades at 86kg.
The first thing you will notice is Adesanya’s narrower stance. The components of his later style were still in play here, but they lacked the polish that would later define his career. The second thing you will notice is the relentless stance-switching, both in shifts and at range. I love the way Adesanya employs shifting combinations into angles later in his career, but the Eades fight demonstrates what a more nascent form of that style looks like.
Punching into kicks and kicking into punches were always staples in Israel’s arsenal, but his trademark shifting footwork wasn’t on display against Eades. Notice how he throws his lead right hand, while simultaneously pulling his left leg forward. For a split second, his stance is square before he throws the final left high kick.
Israel feints with a jab and a half-step, causing Eades to swing wild. When Adesanya pushes Eades back with a combination, notice how often he shifts throughout this exchange, even if it takes some of the power off his punches by eliminating his grounding. However, Israel’s ability to hammer the body off of an opponent’s high guard was in place from the very beginning, as he takes a slight inside angle on Eades before dropping him with a knee up the middle.
Even before Adesanya became a feinting and angular menace, he still looked a lot like someone with the instincts and inferences of a great fighter. It is a testament to Eugene Bareman (Adesanya’s head coach) and his attention to detail that he was capable of building on Israel’s striking arsenal without having to completely reinvent his fighter. Over time, the seeds that Izzy sewed during his time on the New Zealand circuit would sprout into a style with an almost indescribable amount of depth.
Israel Adesanya vs. Jason Wilnis
The best fight in Adesanya’s catalogue is also one of the most unfortunate. After defeating Yousri Belagaroui to earn a shot at the Glory middleweight title, Adesanya fought a gorgeous backfoot fight against Jason Wilnis, demonstrating some of the best body work, combination punching and ringcraft of his career. Terrible judging aside, Israel fought an excellent fight against the champion in one of Glory’s best title bouts.
In the early going, Adesanya stayed pretty evenly weighted on his feet, flashing and stiff-arming with his lead hand in front of Wilnis’ guard to impede his vision. With his opponent’s guard up, he began kicking down the center.
Wilnis had to keep his gloves high to prevent Izzy’s lead hand from piercing through his guard, but he also became susceptible to Adesanya’s subtle feinting. Notice as Israel feints with his shoulder, Wilnis narrows his guard even further. Adesanya is still able to needle a vertical fist jab through Wilnis’ guard, before hitting the body. Recognizing that Wilnis was attempting to counter Adesanya’s kicks by going low, Israel immediately retracts his lead foot after kicking to evade Wilnis’ counter. Finally, as Wilnis attempts to crash in behind Adesanya’s southpaw body kick, Adesanya is already framing off Wilnis’ head, controlling his posture, and breaking before his opponent can capitalize.
Jason had a very difficult time establishing any sort of consistent threat off a lead. Adesanya was incredibly disciplined fighting in-and-out, diffusing Wilnis’ senses with feints, and then landing sharp combinations before sliding out of range. What continues to amaze me about Adesanya is his ability to make complex elements of a fight seem so simple. Be it feints, lateral movement, frames, or rhythm changes, Izzy is one of the sport’s best systematic strikers, where each piece works in tandem with the others without requiring too much mental or physical exertion.
Wilnis couldn’t cut off Adesanya’s exits reliably and he wasn’t sure when to commit to a counter with his hands, because Adesanya was putting so little into his feints and throwaways. On the backfoot, Israel made a consistent effort to disrupt the path of Wilnis’ lead hand and on the rare moments when he was pinned along the ropes, he could feint both directions before throwing as he angled off.
Adesanya slips inside Wilnis’ jab and ends up completely flat with his back along the ropes. To exit, Israel throws a 1-4 separated by a half-beat. A full beat behind the uppercut, he frames off Wilnis’ guard with his lead hand while taking a lateral step with his right foot to retake some open space while preventing Wilnis from countering his step.
Israel’s ability to build entries around and through Wilnis’ guard were truly something to behold in this fight. Standing orthodox, he throws a rear head kick while Jason blocks, but as his guard is out of position to catch the incoming kick, Adesanya punches off his kick from the same side a la Andy Ristie. In open space, Izzy taps Wilnis’ gloves with a 1-2 before digging into a left hook to the body, and continuing to build off it with another tap into an uppercut.
This fight demonstrates how unique a kickboxer Adesanya is, especially when paired up against a more traditional Dutch striker. Instead of narrowed stance, a high guard, and measured step-in, Israel maximizes his reach by folding at the hip and fighting at the full extension of his lead hand. This also helped him feint out Wilnis’ kicks, staying light on his lead foot before retracting it after Wilnis attempted to counter by kicking low. Adesanya’s physiological dimensions mean that he is excellent when he is able to set up kicks and long, straight punches at range before framing off, but that isn’t all he is good at. The more opponents become reactive to Adesanya, the more comfortable he is initiating exchanges on the inside. If Israel is occasionally criticized as a slow starter, it is purely because of his early assessments of his opponent’s reactions. This skill, more than any other, paid dividends in his transition into MMA.
Israel Adesanya vs. Alex Pereira
Adesanya left the sport of kickboxing on a fairly dubious note. After the aforementioned decision loss to Jason Wilnis, Israel attempted to avenge a loss to Alex Pereira (a fighter who is generally considered by many to be the very best kickboxer in the sport today). Instead of a comfortable bounce-back win, Israel ended up on the losing end of a highlight reel KO as his bookend to the sport of kickboxing.
Israel was in control of the fight until he wasn’t. When he pushed Pereira on the backfoot, he was able to play off his deep reservoir of entries and angles, programming Alex’s senses and generally just picking his man apart.
In nearly every exchange, Pereira was looking for the counter left hook. Adesanya did a lovely job changing his plane of attack and playing with entries. He throws away a right hand to draw Pereia’s guard up before slamming a left hook to his body, and Alex counters with a left. Notice the pair of hand traps Izzy utilizes here; holds the jab hand in front of Pereira’s face to blind him before dragging down Alex’s lead hand and landing the right hand (a classic Dutch hand-trap). Then, he repeats the setup, but shifts to southpaw, taking an outside angle on Pereira and trapping Alex’s lead hand with the now-lead right hand before slinging a long left hand to his body.
If there is something to criticize in Adesanya’s performance prior to the finish, it has to be his careless exchanges from time to time. Israel is a great sniper, but he isn’t built to hang in extended exchanges, at least with fighters of comparable skill.
Israel has the right idea here initially. He uses a noncommittal jab to impede Alex’s vision and draw out the counter left hook, before countering that with a straight right. The problem here arises from Israel extending the exchange, and not realizing how Pereira was continually looking for the same left hook three times over. When Alex lands his left hook just before Adesanya’s right hand, he catches Israel slightly off balance.
Decent adjustment here from Adesanya, attempting to smother Pereira’s left hook. Alex slips inside Izzy’s jab, but it accomplishes its goal of drawing the counter, and Israel converts the punch into a collar tie. As Pereira throws his left hook, Israel has his right hand up to catch the punch while also pulling Alex towards him. This both smothers the punch, and allows Adesanya to net an inside frame on Pereira’s lead shoulder.
It’s tough to say what went wrong for Adesanya here. Maybe he was a bit too eager to exchange, but the biggest tactical mistake was switching to southpaw, when he was eliminating Pereira’s left hook well enough from orthodox.
Pereira didn’t do anything notably different in the knockout exchange. He altered the arc of his herding punch (right hand) slightly to draw Adesanya into leaning rightward for the incoming left hook, but the biggest difference here was from Israel, standing southpaw. To respond to Alex’s right hand, his own rear left hand couldn’t be converted into a frame as easily since the distance between the two was greater. If you pause at 0.62 of the clip, Pereira has taken the outside angle on Israel, slipped underneath Adesanya’s rear hand frame, and all of his weight loaded up into the left hook. Conversely, Adesanya’s position is compromised with his frame offset, yet all of his weight remains on his front foot. He is effectively leaning into the best left hook in kickboxing.
The biggest takeaway from this fight is Adesanya’s blindspot for left-sided strikes, particularly when he switches southpaw. In general, Izzy does a great job of maintaining the distance in front of him and seeing his opponent’s punches coming, but when he’s standing in an open-stance engagement, he loses some initiative within the lead hand battle and it becomes easier for opponents to hook around his long guard. This same habit would surface against later in Israel’s career versus Kelvin Gastelum.
I don’t think the loss says anything particularly damning about Adesanya, considering his early success. He shifted out of his orthodox to give Pereira a new look, and it backfired.
Israel Adesanya vs. Brad Tavares
Israel Adesanya’s triumvirate of success is built off the hand feints, shoulder feints, and hip (or feet) feints. Similar to ACA alum, Alexandr Shabliy, Adesanya demonstrates the importance of diverse feints to exploit a variety of reactions. With his lead hand, he can paw, flash, throwaway, and properly feint to diffuse an opponent’s reactions, play with hand traps, occupy an opponent’s vision, and disguise the committed punches coming behind them feints. However, like Shabliy, Adesanya also recognizes the importance of rear hand feinting, be it if the jab is mitigated or if the left hook or jab is disguised.
However, Israel’s technical game runs even deeper. As a surprisingly deceptive and potent kicker, Adesanya’s hip feints are often used to take subtle offensive angles on his opponents, shift, and draw reactions. Finally, Israel’s shoulder feints function similar to his hand feints, but require even less commitment and often cause opponents to underestimate the distance between the two. Even his stance frequently vexes his opponents, since he will continually play off placing his weight over his lead hip and working with his rear hand, an uncommon interplay.
As my friend and colleague Ryan Wagner has pointed out in a previous article about Adesanya, Izzy’s weight distribution between his feet combined with his sneaky rear right hand means that opponents are even more confused at what is coming at them, and from what angle:
“When a fighter is coiled over the rear hip with weight loaded on the rear leg, a la Dan Henderson, he is in perfect position to transfer weight explosively forward into a rear straight or overhand. Likewise, when a fighter is coiled over his lead hip, his opponent will generally be expecting a lead hook. By leaning over his lead hip and firing off the straight, Adesanya makes it more difficult to anticipate. If his opponents get too comfortable waiting on the straight when he’s on his lead hip, the threat of the up-jab exists to keep them honest,” (Israel Adesanya vs. Brad Tavares: The Birth of a Star).
Against Brad Tavares, Adesanya was given a showcase opportunity. His performance against the Hawaiian highlighted just how layered his game can be when every single piece gets rolling.
Israel uses his shoulder and hand to feint at Tavares, while standing in a heavily-bladed stance. He diligently keeps his foot pointed toward Tavares’ center line, and his rear foot angles behind. Tavares’ reactions to the feints are twitchy, so when he steps in, head ducked, Adesanya runs him onto a sharp intercepting knee before landing a right hand on the break.
Adesanya folds over his lead hip and feints a half-step. To Tavares, Adesanya is appearing closer than he really is and Brad bites on the feint by shelling. Izzy immediately begins pulling, as Tavares attempts to follow up with a 1-1-2, to which Izzy responds to all three: pull, outside slip, frame across Tavares’ lead shoulder.
Brad was almost immediately beguiled by Adesanya’s blizzard of feints, and for much of the fight, he was nervously reactive. This is perhaps the worst response a fighter can have to Israel, yet it is the one Adesanya is most keen to draw out of his opposition.
Utilizing an extremely subtle shoulder feint, Adesanya smashes Tavares with a powerful up-jab. Israel’s jab lands before Tavares can throw his jab, but Brad thinks the exchange has concluded and Adesanya catches him blind with a clean right hand a full beat behind the jab. Tavares reels and attempts to step in again behind his high guard, but Israel pushes his hips backward, grabs the double collar-ties, and cracks Tavares again with a knee on the break. Notice how Israel immediately shifts off the knee and frames with his lead hand on the inside of Tavares’ lead shoulder.
In the latter half of the fight, Tavares began shelling with his hands at nearly movement from Israel, so Adesanya began playing with this response both at range and within the clinch.
Izzy angles with a pawing jab, which draws Tavares’ shell. As Brad steps into range behind his guard, his vision is obstructed. Adesanya grabs Tavares’ head and lands a shifting knee, leaving him in southpaw.
Adesanya takes a slight angle with his pawing jaw, which Tavares responds by shelling, impeding his own vision. Israel takes advantage by placing both hands over Brad’s head and pulling him into a shifting knee.
The most impressive technical leap from Adesanya’s scrappy Vettori victory and his domination of Tavares was in his layered, diligent clinch. Israel has always been a handsy fighter, but his pummeling and grip-fighting unveiled itself, as did an efficient crossface inside combined with collar-ties to turn opponents off of him. Tavares himself may not be an elite MMA wrestler, but a lot of Adesanya’s habits and discipline inside sent a scary message to the rest of the division planning to drag Israel down to the mat.
As Adesanya demonstrated against Wilnis and Pereira, his clinch game in kickboxing was primarily used to either intercept and smother combinations, or stiff-arm and displace the head at the absolute peak of his range.
Israel’s dimensional clinch game evolved from his kickboxing days. Against Justin Wilnis, for instance, Adesanya was more committed to play an all-the-way-in-all-the-way-out game in the clinch, stabbing his man with a pointed jab before keeping his frames as long as possible before angling off. His head control on the inside was generally meant to impede his opponent from attacking around him and keep them off, as opposed to actively attacking in transitions.
Israel’s clinch proved to be both effective offensively and defensively. Here, he strips Tavares’ hands from the high guard, alternates inside elbows with collar-ties, and utilizing the double collar-ties to yank Brad away on a break.
For all of the remarkable individual moments that Adesanya had against Tavares, the consistency of his threatening clinch was arguably more impressive than any specific exchange. It was a synthesis of the fundamentals from his kickboxing career and the revitalized training that Israel was able to announce himself as a threat in phases and transitions almost immediately.
Israel Adesanya vs. Kelvin Gastelum
Perhaps controversially, I don’t think Israel Adesanya fought a particularly great fight against Kelvin Gastelum. Against such a technically underwhelming opponent, it took him a lot longer than it should’ve to put Gastelum in his place. However, against shockingly quick puncher, Izzy displayed some fine adaptability and badly exploited his opponent’s distinct lack of depth.
Israel’s propensity to shift off the backfoot instead of pivoting to reangle hurt him early against Kelvin. Against Whittaker, it proved to be a useful tool in breaking the line of his opponent’s attack, but against Gastelum, Israel’s feet got jumbled when trying to shift moving backward against such a quick southpaw. As Adesanya throws his right hand, he immediately tries to frame and shift, but Gastelum simply continues to follow Israel throw his shifting footwork and catches him with a second right hook as Adesanya is standing nearly side-on. A cross quarter-step pivot after throwing the right hand in this exchange would’ve been useful, because against a southpaw opponent, the open side exit is available.
Despite a few successful moments in this fight, the fundamental fact remains: Kelvin is an incredibly rote boxer. As a southpaw, almost all of his combinations begin with a leaping right jab, followed by a left hand. Without much craft in terms of rhythm changes or a systematic method of weaving in proactive defensive movements, target changes, or diverse entries, Gastelum has become one of the most predictable fighters in the sport. After adjusting to his opponent’s speed, Adesanya began tearing this tired approach apart.
Adesanya leans over his lead hip and throws out a subtle shoulder feint to draw a response. Gastelum abides, by springing in with a jab. Israel changes his weight distribution, leans over his rear hip, and frames with his lead, hiding behind his shoulder. As Gastelum’s follow-up left hand misses, he has broken his own positioning in extension, and Israel counters with a straight right hand as Gastelum is attempting to get his feet back under him.
Gastelum also doesn’t possess a particularly deep understanding of angles, so he typically just defaults to finding the outside angle before throwing. Israel fed Kelvin the outside angle, and punished him badly for it.
Adesanya’s pocket defense isn’t anything particularly special, but where he excels is in punishing opponents attempting to consistently reach the pocket against him. Gastelum is fast, but he lacks sufficient cage-cutting footwork to punish Adesanya’s exits. In order to consistently force exchanges with Adesanya on the inside, you need to safely work your way into range with your feet under you. It might’ve been a stylistic disparity or a physiological one, but Gastelum and Whittaker both had to crush a lot of distance on Adesanya and draw him into exchanges in the pocket without overextending and without becoming too predictable. Both former welterweights were also very susceptible to feints on the outside, unsure of what was coming back at them or from what the offense was coming. Protracted sequences of Israel building off his kicking game, combined with a narrow window of preferred operating space is a bad equation for future opponents.
Israel draws his rear leg up and feints a teep. Gastelum bites hard, and outstretches both hands as an attempt to frame(?) Adesanya off of him. Israel lands a shifting three-punch combination, the first punch a whole beat behind the feint and the consecutive punches each a half-beat apart. As he brings his right leg forward, Israel is proactively leaning off his rear hip, far away from any potential return fire.
This exchange perfectly highlights Adesanya’s ability to key in on subtle openings that opponent’s provide. Israel throws a short oblique kick to Gastelum’s lead leg to program Kelvin into thinking he was going low. He follows it with a question mark kick to Kelvin’s head. Notice how Kelvin remains light on his lead leg, in order to preemptively check in incoming oblique kick. The third time around, Israel ultimately lands front kick to Gastelum’s chin, because Gastelum’s arms are in position to block the head kick from a moment prior.
I am still interested in seeing Adesanya against an opponent more competent at handling feints. An opponent like Paulo Costa remains a thrilling proposition, because the Brazilian would likely throw (and kick) back at Israel’s feints, and might not get as discouraged if he missed. Someone willing to crowd Adesanya in the pocket, ignore every twitching feint, kick with him, and pressure him with sound footwork and his feet under him might just be the ultimate challenge for the New Zealander.
Kelvin Gastelum is not a very good boxer, but he is a fast, durable and willing one, which gave Adesanya some pause early. More than anything, Kelvin demonstrated how frustrated Adesanya can become when he’s denied lead hand control. As I previously noted in his kickboxing career, his lead hand was his go-to tool to gauge his own distance, impede the opponent’s vision, and create defensive frames. Just by pawing and batting Israel’s lead hand away, Gastelum was able to encroach upon Adesanya’s distance (at least early) with more aplomb than his previous opponents.
Although Adesanya took a bit longer to adjust to the opponent in front of him that he should’ve, the gap between the two in terms of skill showed itself to be nothing short of seismic. Without any sort of serious offensive diversity, Israel found the openings in his opponent and consistently did everything in his power to exploit them with extreme prejudice.
Israel Adesanya vs. Robert Whittaker
By the time Israel Adesanya was slated to fight Robert Whittaker for the middleweight title, it felt like a foregone conclusion that Izzy would leave with the championship. What followed was likely the greatest middleweight performance in MMA history.
The developmental leap from the Adesanya who faced Gastelum to the Adesanya who faced Whittaker was subtle, but incredibly thoughtful. If there was one tactical difference that Izzy made from the two fights it was in mitigating Whittaker’s initial strike in exchanges. While Izzy was able to time Gastelum’s predictable left hand off of the timing from his jab, against Whittaker, Adesanya did a much better job of parrying or blocking Whittaker’s opening strike (generally a jab or a left hook) before either evading or countering.
Adesanya catches Whittaker’s jab on entry, and turns his hand into a frame off of Whittaker’s lead shoulder, denying Whittaker a lane for his jab before leaning off and hiding his chin behind his lead shoulder.
Adesanya did a brilliant job of obstructing Whittaker’s overhand right. Notice that Whittaker enters with a jab, draws his rear foot behind him to plant, and then reangles with his lead leg to the outside angle created by Adesanya to shorten the travel distance of his overhand right. However, Adesanya transfers the weight onto his rear leg and leans off Rob’s jab, before parrying it aside, taking a slight angle moving backwards with his left leg, and exiting out the open side.
Robert Whittaker’s style inherently requires a high level of commitment, since he typically has to blitz over a certain amount of distance to find his range. Against a fighter like Yoel Romero, who planted his feet and tried to catch Whittaker’s incoming combinations before counter, this worked just fine, because Romero wasn’t breaking Whittaker’s line of offense. On the other hand, Adesanya recognized the difference between Whittaker’s opening strikes and his committed strikes, and he understood that Rob would have to readjust his feet to continue tracking him down.
Israel made an effort to commit to leans and rolls only after Robert had planted his lead leg. Notice Adesanya utilizing his lead hand to preemptively block a potential left hook.
The more Adesanya hindered Whittaker’s initial strike, the more desperate Whittaker got. Instead of fencing with his jab, and playing with different entries or targets (like hitting the body or kicking the legs), he became frustrated and started charging from too far out. Just like Tavares before him, Whittaker’s anxiety to Israel’s feints earned a tremendous exchange to the body for Adesanya.
Whittaker’s lack of committed body work was incredibly indicting, but on the contrary, Adesanya recognized Whittaker’s jittery responses to his feints and took advantage by ripping the body. As Israel is pawing at Whittaker with both hands to draw a high guard, his feet are constantly reangling, taking the centerline again with his lead foot and cautiously planting with his rear foot. When he does plant, his stance is much longer and more rooted than Rob’s so he once against positionally checkmated the champ. Notice the rhythm of the feints into the body shots; full beats separating the feints, then the body-head combination separated by half-beats.
I love how Adesanya takes a slight angle with his lead foot to slip inside of Whittaker’s jab. This is half the reason Adesanya netted a knockdown in the first place; his feet were set and in position to punch. After Whittaker threw his right hand, his back leg was off the ground and his positioning in the pocket was destroyed. Adesanya doubled up on the right hand, both simultaneously countering Whittaker’s entry and catching Whittaker after he threw, with Robert’s entire stance completely flat.
Israel Adesanya may be the best fighter in the world at baiting opponents into overcommitting before punishing them. He maintained a light lead foot and folded over his lead hip to convince Whittaker he was closer than he was. When Whittaker leapt in after Adesanya, Izzy was prepared to slip, roll, or pull off of the combinations, and Whittaker wasn’t able to adapt to the smarter, more disciplined striker.
Whittaker counters Adesanya’s step-in with a jab, but his issue here was attempting to extend the exchange. Israel pulls off the incoming right hand after Whittaker’s jab (taking a subtle step forward with his lead foot simultaneously), herds him with a short right hook, and clatters Rob with a left hook as Rob attempts to hook with him. Notice how Adesanya’s lead foot is wedged directly towards Robert’s centerline, while Whittaker’s rear foot is completely off the ground after overthrowing his right hand. As Israel lands his final left hook, he has proactively leaned off of Whittaker’s incoming hook, his footing is dominant, while Whittaker’s backfoot is haphazardly planted.
It was as if Adesanya had internalized the mistakes that he made versus Alex Pereira all those years prior, recontextualized them, and then applied them flawlessly against the middleweight champion. He was able to preemptively limited exchanges both with his hand parries/frames and with his feet, and he made sure that every time Whittaker did enter, his positioning was already grossly compromised. The finishing sequence mirrors that of the Pereira knockout as well, herding with the right into the deadening left hook. It was nothing short of masterful.
A New Era
The UFC’s middleweight division has been in disarray since Michael Bisping unceremoniously knocked Luke Rockhold out at UFC 199. For the past few years, matchmaking, comebacks, and injuries have marred the division’s trajectory and has managed to chew up and spit out a few great fighters in the process. For a while it looked like Yoel Romero was the divisional boogeyman. After UFC 213, Robert Whittaker appeared to be the man with the golden ticket. As time went on, Rob didn’t wind up being the savior people preemptively pinned him as. Momentum is ridiculously hard to maintain in the 185 pound division, but now it seems that it was only a matter of time until someone turned back the clock.
Israel Adesanya began as a shot in the arm for the division, but after defeating Robert Whittaker to claim the lineal title, he has proven himself to be something far greater. He has become what Whittaker couldn’t be; the champion the division has desperately needed for years. Very rarely do fighters develop so thoroughly and rapidly throughout their time in the UFC, but in seven UFC fights, Izzy has gone from hyped prospect to reigning champion. There is no overstating how remarkable his rise has been. Time will tell where he goes from here, but if his development and performances are an indication, the sky's the absolute limit.