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UFC middleweight contender Dricus du Plessis believes former champion Israel Adesanya churned out one of his worst performances when he lost his title to Sean Strickland at UFC 293 last Saturday.
Du Plessis was supposed to fight Adesanya, but an injury led to Strickland stepping in and defeating Adesanya for the middleweight title. Du Plessis thinks Adesanya looked off from the start and didn’t fight his best.
Before the fight, Adesanya was the favourite to win, and Du Plessis gave Strickland less than a one per cent chance of winning. However, Strickland surprised everyone by dominating Adesanya with his striking, even coming close to finishing him in the first round.
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Du Plessis believes he would have finished Adesanya in the first round if he had faced him that night.
“I told them even before the fight started, ‘Izzy looks weird.’ I don’t know what it is, I don’t know if it’s extra motivation, but it’s different. Something’s weird. And when the fight started, I said, not even a minute in, ‘Izzy looks off.’ Some people saying it was just Sean Strickland shutting him down. That’s not the fact of the matter. Izzy didn’t fight the way that Izzy can fight. That was the worst Izzy we’ve ever seen in the cage,” Du Plessis said.
“One-hundred per cent I would have finished him in the first round). One-hundred percent. If I fought that version of Israel Adesanya, that fight do you think Robert Whittaker would have beaten that version of Israel Adesanya? Yes. That fight went a round and a half with me and Whittaker. There’s no way Izzy would have seen the second round.”
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