- Jan 23, 2010
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I think it was less who has he lost to than it is who has he beat?
I've always said he's a good fighter, but I thought his ceiling was limited. Imavov, Hermansson (by SD), Hall, Jotko, Allen. These are all good fighters that he has beat, but none of them suggest he's championship level. I don't think I need to list out all the guys that Izzy has beat for comparison.
Agreed this was the thinking. This is the part where I think I may need to start re-thinking things though as when some of these guys stay active they don't always get the name/ranked fights so you just need to judge them on if they beat the guys that are in front of them. And for the most part, Strickland has. We basically just saw something similar with O'Malley. I don't really know yet, it's just something I want to think about.
I take your point about losing a split decision to Cannonier, but at the same time, while Izzy-Cannonier was boring, pretty much everybody thought it was a clear 50-45 or 49-46 win for Izzy. And even though they both got KO'ed by Pereira, Izzy was up 3-1 on all of the judge's scorecards and obviously KO'ed him in the rematch.
I picked Cannonier to do well against Adesanya which obviously looks bad in retrospect but I really do think he has the right style to beat Izzy and in my head it showed some similarities to what Strickland did on the weekend in terms of staying close and not giving Adesanya any space. He fought an awful fight that night, completely froze up. But yes, agreed with all this.
On paper, it didn't seem like a good style matchup either. Strickland doesn't have the wrestling of even Whittaker or Vettori (not that either is that great of a wrestler). Doesn't have the power of Pereira or Cannonier or Romero. He has exactly 1 submission in the UFC in his debut in 2014. So it seemed like it was going to be a stand up fight. Looking at their resumes, including Izzy's decorated kickboxing career, there was no real evidence to think Strickland is a better striker. If anybody picked Strickland, I don't see how it was anything but a "gut feeling" or "MMA is a crazy sport" or "I don't like Izzy, so I'm picking Strickland because that's what I want to happen" type of pick.
This is the part I think maybe people got wrong. A basic boxer who isn't afraid to keep the fight "in a phonebooth" or whatever is exactly the right style matchup to beat Adesanya and we saw it Saturday night. Guys run into issues when they stay at range and let issue get off his kicks but Strickland has this in-close, jab/hook, pressure style that I think a) Strickland has proven to be effective in past fights and b) stylistically should work against someone like Adesanya. These are also two fighters who go to a ton of decisions, so we should have seen a decision coming. We also know Adesanya has had fights go to closer than they should be decisions. So I don't know, maybe the clues were there but just nobody looked?
Point being, Izzy being a massive favorite was the rational conclusion to draw IMO. I don't know that there was really some blatant thing we all missed. It's just yet another reminder that anything can happen in this sport. I think if you watch it long enough, you will eventually learn this lesson only to forget this lesson many times. I know within the least 1.5-2 years, I re-learned this with Nunes-Pena, applied it to fights like Usman-Edwards and Valentina-Grasso (I picked Usman and Valentina, but I didn't count out Edwards or Grasso), only to forget it with Izzy-Strickland.
Ultimately I still agree he should have been the large favorite. But Strickland's camp said he was going to employ this style and people generally agreed that this was the only way he could win the fight. And hey, it worked. This wasn't a lucky fight - this was a style that has worked for Strickland in the past vs lesser competition that worked against the top competition. So yes, the odds were correct but I do think people (including myself) missed a fairly obvious way Strickland could win.